Call it the puzzle of the petunia.
A few weeks ago, a cream-white petunia was suddenly growing in a clay flowerpot on our deck.
How did it get there?
We hadn’t planted a petunia flower or seed in the pot that already contained a blooming pink Gerbera daisy. We didn’t have any other petunias growing in any of the pots of red and white zinnias, pink geraniums, yellow daisies, purple dahlias and assorted other flowers on the corner of our deck - or anywhere else we have plants and flowers.
We had brought the pot with the Gerbera daisy inside for the winter, where it hibernated until we brought it outside in late May. The last time we had a petunia of that color growing anywhere on our property was, I think, last summer – in another pot on our deck with other flowers, all of which died their natural death in last fall’s cold. That’s when I dumped the dirt with the petunias and other flowers in the woods about 50 yards from our deck.
But in mid-July, there was the cream-white petunia suddenly growing strong and true in the pot with the Gerbera daisy.
How did that happen, here in the cold Catskills?
Petunias may bloom year after year in warm places like Florida and Hawaii where they can flower year-round, but around here, they’re annuals. They die in the fall and don’t bloom again.
So this shove-it-in-the-dirt-and-hope-it-grows-type-non-gardener doesn't really know how it happened. Could a seed from last year’s petunia have landed in the pot with the Gerbera daisy, germinated over the winter and early spring and then decided to grow?
That’s certainly possible, says Orange County Arboretum horticulturist Peter Patel, who explains that the wind or a bird could even have dropped a seed from a mile away into the pot.
But no matter how it got there, it would be an amazing defiance of odds, wouldn’t it? The petunia seed would have had to fly through the air and land in one of the only two pots - of the more than a dozen on the deck – that just happened to be the ones we brought inside. Then it had to survive the winter with hardly any care except a little watering.
We may never solve the puzzle of the cream-white petunia.
And maybe that’s the way it should be.
In these unsettling times when we’re pummeled by the daily news of so much darkness and death, it’s so reassuring to know that the world is still bursting with life-renewing wonder.
Like all of life’s miraculous forces – such as the flame of love that grows brighter between my wife and me or you and a loved one, or the innocence of a child like my 3-year-old nephew Kane urging me to see the “ghost” behind the living room curtain - the power of nature is something we may not quite explain, but can always count on.
The growth of a flower – like our wondrous cream-white petunia – connects us to something both bigger than ourselves and deep within us; something awe-inspiring and so familiar: the eternal cycle of life.
steveisrael53@outlook.com
The Link LonkAugust 03, 2020 at 11:59PM
https://www.recordonline.com/story/opinion/2020/08/03/flower-blooms-where-we-did-not-expect-it-reminding-us-life-cycles/5545569002/
STEVE ISRAEL: A simple trick of nature, a powerful reminder of persistence - Times Herald-Record
https://news.google.com/search?q=Flower&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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