A Much Awaited Flowering

As a child, I remember showing my visiting grandmother a certain potted plant and telling her indignantly that it ‘simply refused to flower’. Then my grandmother touched the leaves and told me that this plant had been given to her by a cousin of hers and it usually gave out the most beautiful flower called a ‘Nun flower’. ‘It needs to be looked after well’, she said.




Years later, I brought that adamantly non flowering plant into my own garden, determined to make it flower. I repotted it, fed it and looked after it as well as I possibly could. It still refused to flower. Then in exasperation, I had it kept on a ledge along the wall that received maximum sunlight. ‘Please flower!’ I part begged, part commanded the plant, expecting an iris to grow out between its elongated ridged leaves.



Then last evening, I walked outside to examine some creepers growing along the outer wall of my garden and there, peeping amidst all the foliage was what I'd waited all these years for, an extraordinarily beautiful Nun flower!