Wednesday, February 11, 2009

A passion for passion

So yesterday I'm in the back yard playing with the Bug. He goes off to ride the skateboard down the slide, so I take the opportunity to pull a bunch of old, deal passion vines off the dog run fence. I discover two surprising things--one is an incarnata vine under most of the dead foliage that is still green and growing. In February. Incarnata passion flowers invariably die back to the ground at the first hint of cold and resprout every spring. The fact that this one is still alive and growing well past the middle of winter shows just how warm weather has been these past months.

The second surprise came when I pulled up one dead vine and about 18 inches of root as thick as my little finger came with it. Goodness! What to do with this find? Passiflora roots are hardy things--regrowing in the spring and all. So I did what any passion flower nut would do. I cut into sections and planted them around campus in isolated semi-wilderness areas today during my lunch break. I've thrown seed out in the past, but haven't had any take. This time, however, I'd expect the odds are much improved on having passis blooming by midsummer.

Now Playing: Johann Sebastian Bach Romantic Movements vol. 8

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