Grandmother's Rosary

My wedding bouquet was a mixture of all red flowers...roses and calla lilies.

 I loved it, it was gorgeous!

Hell I even had it dried and framed.

Well that red bouquet was one flower away from being red AND white.

Seems so trivial now, but at the time I was one step away from going Bridezilla on my florist

The day before our wedding my mom and I went to the flower shop to finalize the centerpieces.  When we got there the florist said some of my bouquet flowers had arrived and very excitedly brought out a Gardenia.

It was perfect and smelled amazing...however it was white.  VERY white.

Definitely NOT for my bouquet.

In fact no where in any of our wedding flowers did we have gardenia.

When I questioned her she brought out the order form and said, no look, it says "Gardenia" right here.

I stared at the form for a minute...huh.  She's right. It does, but that can't be right.  So I looked a little harder....it said "Grandmother's rosary"  Which was right....the rosary my grandma brought back from Rome was supposed to be wrapped around the stems.

We all laughed it off (me thanking the lord we had caught it before my bouquet was made) and decided to add the flower to my moms corsage since she loved them.

It all worked out.

We got married.

Life went one.

My mom and I often joked about it every time we saw a Gardenia.

"Hey look mom, it's "grandma's rosary"

Fast forward almost 2 years.

One of my good friends sent me a plant after my mom died.

A Gardenia.

She didn't know this story or the little inside joke we had about this simple little flower, so when I opened it up I smiled at the irony of it.

Well the smile stopped there.

I've watered this plant.

Watched it bud time and time again only to have them drop before a single flower opened.

I thought maybe it was just dormant for the winter.

Or it wasn't getting enough sunlight.

I googled and found out they're very temperamental.

Great.  I have the woman of the plant world.

Figures.

So I went out and bought the special fertilizer it likes.

Moved it to a sunnier spot in the house.

Re-potted it.

Yelled Talked to it.

Tried not to let the dogs tail smack it every.single.time we went outside.

Moved it outdoors now that the weather is nicer cause Mr. Google told me it likes humidity.

I basically became BFF's with a plant.

And I waited.

Until finally....yesterday I went outside and I saw it.

One small, white flower.

I actually screamed out loud.

Finally.

It only took 7 months.

But I actually got my grandmother's rosary to bloom!

And people say I don't have a green thumb!