In the evening yesterday, I was sitting reading a book, with a cup of tea, sometimes looking at the pink bougainvillea, when my mother – who is no expert on gardening – tells me that she’d read once that the only way to make the plant bloom is to starve it of water, then water it unexpectedly, tricking the plant into believing that this is its last chance to survive : it will be filled with colourful bracts then, not flowers – the actual small flowers are enclosed within these bracts – in order to propagate. The happier bougainvillea is the one with the unnoticeable green foliage. The scared bougainvillea, the one that can be spotted even from a distance, is the prettiest, the most beautiful.
She says she cannot do it.
Beyond Six Rivers 