
My sister gave me a starter plant of this little noid miniature violet a few years ago. She referred to it as the “survivor violet”, because back home it lived on a windowsill with an oriole feeder on the other side. The cats would see the orioles, take a flying leap off the dining room table, hit the window and slide down, taking out the plants below. This happened multiple times (not the brightest cats, alas). The violet was broken up every time, and suffered a few other indignities, but its pieces always rooted and grew vigourously.
Back when I was living at the apartment, I didn’t have a lot of window space, and I often forgot to water the indoor plants. Between that and an ill-advised repot into crappy soil, I finally killed my survivor violet. However, one leaf had fortuitously fallen off into a pot below it. The plant in that pot also eventually died, but the leaf rooted and hung on. When we moved to this house, I finally put it in its own pot, in good soil, in good light. This is the first time this particular iteration has bloomed.




