Aunt Zip’s African violets

Though her real name was Zilpah, we always called my father’s sister Aunt Zip. She was about as different from my father as you could imagine. Dad was calm and steady with mathematician’s mind. She was…not. She was short and plump with (usually) red hair, always wore dresses that were (usually) pink. She loved to write, especially poetry and I am absolutely convinced that if she were living now, she’d LOVE Facebook and she’d be writing a weekly, if not daily, blog.

She had no children and was single for most of her life, marrying late and often. Once she had a taste of marriage, she must have liked it because she tried it several times, losing husbands to both death and divorce.

During our growing up years, she was single and lived in an old brick, two story apartment building on Briarcliff Road in Decatur, Georgia. Her apartment was upstairs, heated with old clanky radiators with all the accoutrements of a spinster; lace doilies on the dresser, her “Mama’s” silver coffee set, carefully polished every week, photos of the family everywhere and her collection of African violets under grow – lights near the windows.

I love all plants. I really do. I just think that some are worth more trouble than others. And African violets, for me, are just not worth the effort. But, I learned one of my first gardening lessons with Aunt Zip and her African violets. I learned that you had to be “very careful” not to get water on the leaves, that they needed to be precisely the right distance from the light, to be at the right temperature, to be fed just the right amount of fertilizer. I almost gave up gardening before I got started but once I learned you could toss some plants in the ground outside and let Nature take over, I was sold.

I actually have an African violet plant that someone gave to me years ago. It’s crammed into my window greenhouse with the other porch plants, waiting until it’s warm enough to go outside again. I don’t give it any special attention. And sure enough, it doesn’t actually look that good and it hasn’t bloomed for years. So, why do I still have it?

Because it reminds me of Aunt Zip and I think about her almost every time I look at my poor little African violet. As I dump water over it, including the leaves, and put it back into its corner, I can hear her careful instructions in my mind. They were like children for her and even though at the time, I thought that was silly, now, so many years later I understand it a little better. It doesn’t matter what you look after and care for, be it a dog, a child or an African violet, the most important thing is that you love something. And Aunt Zip loved her African violets. God bless her.