Back in the 70s, when I was in my early teens, my mother and I got into a house-plant craze.  For a time, our living room looked like a jungle.  At some point, we discovered African violets.  Folks said they were hard to grow, but we had more trouble keeping the philodendron alive.

Fast forward 20 years.  I got a basket of plants for Mother's Day.  It included a violet.  I don't recall what happened to the other things in the basket, but the violet sat in my kitchen windowsill for the next 20 years.  Twice a year, it bloomed profusely, despite the fact that it was seldom fed and was watered only when it appeared near death.  The stem grew up out of the dirt and crooked over the side of the pot so that the green part of the plant - the "whorl" - grew outside of the pot and was perpendicular to the windowsill.

A couple of years ago, we built the screened-in porch you read about in my messages.  This porch shaded the kitchen window where the violet was growing.  I decided to move the violet to the porch, where it would get better light.  It promptly died.

I've been on the lookout for another violet ever since.  Apparently, they've fallen out of favor, for I haven't seen any in a long time.

Earlier this year, my friend Elizabeth called me from the garden department of a chain store and said they had violets, and asked if I wanted her to buy one and mail it to me (she lives in another state).  I jokingly said, "Naw, just pinch me off a leaf or two and mail them to me."

A few days later, an envelope arrived in the mail.  Inside the envelope were four violet leaves, each one wrapped in a wet paper towel, with a bit of aluminum foil wrapped around the paper towel, and all four stuck in a plastic zip bag.  There wasn't much stem on the leaves, but I planted the four leaves in a small pot, and within two weeks, new leaves sprouted from the dirt around three of the leaves.  The fourth leaf shriveled up and died.

Each of the three "starter" leaves eventually grew two new crowns.  I cut the new crowns off the starter leaves and planted them in their own pots, and just for the heck of it, I re-planted the three starter leaves.  They each grew two MORE new crowns.  I now have six pots of two-crown violets on my living room windowsill.  And look what I found this week:

One of the babies is about to bloom!  I can't wait to see what color it is!

About a month ago, my sister ran across a violet in some garden department and bought it for me.  Last week, I accidentally broke a leaf while I was watering it.  I planted the leaf and am watching it closely for signs of new life.

It'll be hard to squeeze any more violet pots onto my windowsill, so if you need a violet, I know where you can get one.  ;)