December 21, 2011

2 1/2 inches!  The newest and youngest leaf is now the largest leaf!  Isn't it amazing how the youngest is the strongest, healthiest, and more mature?  I am thrilled by the rate of growth this plant is having.  2-3 inches is the maximum length the leafs on the Porcelain Flower plant ever get.  That means mine is getting there!  Yay!

December 14, 2011

I would like to call these growing pains.  The leaf that was wilting last week still exhibits signs of crinkling in its edges this week.  Nonetheless, the leaf continues to grow.  Thankfully, it seems I won't be losing this leaf.

December 7, 2011

And this is where we are at today!  Alive and growing strong.  I will be posting more photographs, until this plant is large and totally healthy.  If you want to keep coming back, you can, this blog is more for me personally, like a flower journal.

It is interesting to me to watch this plant grow.  I learn so much from it.  You can see the two scars each stem has in one of its leaves.  The bottom leaf of the bottom stem, and the bottom leaf of the top stem.  I think the scars will always be there, but I think over time, they will be less noticeable.

Today I about panicked.  I have had this plant sitting in the beautiful sunlight of a window pointing West.  I have had it sitting behind the screen for its whole redemptive life.  However, yesterday, I moved it into the full sun, without the screen, and the leaf on the bottom left started to show signs of shriveling.  I sure hope that it doesn't fall.  I hope it can grow through this and be strong.  Again, I have concluded, that this plant hates! change.  Even moving from behind the screen to without the screen hurt one of the baby leaves.

Right now my plant has 10 leaves, and for my heart's sake, I sure hope it keeps growing healthy, and one day, blooms one of those beautiful blooms I recall from the plant that this one was cut from.

October 28, 2011

After seeing how well my plant was doing, I was not afraid to cut off ALL of the dried up and dead leaves that had been that ugly yellow color you saw in the other images.  My plant's new stem grew to have two leaves just like the first one.  And again, just like the first one, its mate died and fell off...but I was hopeful yet again, because the one leaf survived.  Then, out of this leaf, two more emerged!!!  And then, two more emerged from the other leaf!  At this point I was thrilled, my plant was growing!!!!  I then noticed that the plant had an interesting quirk.  A leaf from each stem had a cut in it.  A little nick, you can see it really well in the bottom leaf of this image.  I thought, wow, what a metaphor for life.  We grow with the scars from our past still a part of who we are.

October 13, 2011

You can see in the foreground, that the first new leaf had grown to its full size.  Before it reached this size, there was a second, a mate to this one.  However, it was too weak, and fell off.  I have noticed that this plant grows new leaves in pairs.  When the mate of this one fell off, I was so scared I was going to lose the whole plant again.  After the surviving leaf had reached its full size, I noticed there was a new stem growing...in the back!  This was so exciting!  I hoped so deeply the plant would survive.

September 27, 2011

After traveling 2,300 miles, my cutting totally died.  Before this, the plant was totally healthy and had 3 stems each of which was long and had many leaves on it.  I had been informed that the plant had never bloomed and yet I was so hopeful that one day I might see beautiful flowers from it.  But then, like I have found out through research, the worst happened for the plant, change.  The 2,300 miles was too much for this plant to handle.  It had previously lived in an air conditioned environment, and had now spent 1 week traveling across America.  The leaves all turned to yellow, dried up, and died.  I was so sad, I cried for days thinking that the plant, which was such a dear gift, died within days of receiving it.  But I held out hope.  Each day I would survey the plant and cut the leaves that seemed to be totally dry, and I left the partially dry leaves on hoping that they would help the plant grow back.

After coming home one day from visiting my friend who had given me my cutting, I came inside the house and saw this.  New Life.  My heart, which was down at the time, was renewed by the plant coming back to life.  What an encouragement.

The Story Behind This Story

This is the Mommy plant in which my plant is a cutting from.  This plant has only flowered 3 times in its life, and these photographs are those 3 times.  I have researched a lot about the Porcelain Flower plant, and I have come to find that the plant sometimes needs 7 years after its last big change in order for it to flower.  Lots of light, cool temperatures, watered once a week, and most importantly, consistency, is what the plant needs the most in order for it to bloom.  The stem in which the flowers bloom should never be trimmed if the owner wishes to have flowers again because this plant flowers on the same stem that it has flowered on before.  I was blessed to see these 3 blooms of my friend's plant before I moved away with my precious gift of its cutting.