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PEACE LILY FEELS AT HOME IN MINE... AT LONG LAST

Peace lilies are notoriously difficult to get to re-bloom.

By LADYBUG

Peace lilies, so serene, so beautiful at the nurseries, are notoriously difficult to get to re-bloom. So said my friend and gardening buddy Linda and I have to say I agree.

I’d given into temptation in spite of her words of caution. “They look so lovely now, don’t they? But unless you’re a fan of the foliage, they’ll do nothing more after they’re done blooming,” she’d said on one of our trips to the nursery many years ago.

Since Linda was one of my gardening gurus, someone who taught me how to grow tomatoes from seed and who populated my garden with gifts of plants from her garden, I had no reason to doubt her.

But they were lovely... and so the little pot came home. And her words came true. After that first flush, the plant flourished and grew, but I was not rewarded with any more blooms. I read that they do best in low light and so moved it to a north facing window where it got a few hours of late afternoon light, but it began to languish there.

Wikipedia informed me that “the plant does not require large amounts of light or water to survive. It is most often grown as a houseplant. However, it can withstand the elements well enough to thrive when planted outdoors in hot and humid environments.” And so I moved it around the house, hoping more light would encourage it to bloom. I tried different amounts of water, I fertilized, but my attempts met with more leaves. I didn’t find them as boring as Linda had predicted, and so I kept the plant, moving it to progressively larger pots over the years.

I might have resigned myself to that had I not read that while they typically bloom in the spring, a healthy peace lily might bloom twice a year. And so I kept hoping. And hovering over the plant, looking for signs of blooms.

While Linda checked in periodically on the progress – or lack thereof – telling me that I was wasting prime real estate on a plant that refused to perform.

But then she was made of sterner stuff than I and had dug up a snowball bush from her yard and assigned it to the compost heap when it didn’t bloom for a few years in a row.

I told her I liked the leaves while she did her best not to roll here eyes. While the plant grew bigger and eventually needed dividing.

I pulled it out, separated the baby plant from the original plant and placed it lovingly in another pot. And both sat in their pots, doing pretty much the same thing, which is to say, nothing.

Until one day. I saw a stalk shooting up from the baby plant. At first, it looked just like another stalk, and I expected the bud at its end to open into yet more leaves. But a few days later there it was, the most beautiful bloom! And then another stalk with another bloom!

I couldn’t wait to call Linda to share an old Indian proverb with her.

“Mool se zyada sood pyara hota hai” in Hindi literally translates to interest is more precious than the principal, and is generally used affectionately to say grandchildren are more precious than children!

Peace lilies can live and bloom for many years from what I read and I am looking forward to many peace lily grandbabies now!