Aunt Margaret’s Begonia

My beautiful aunt Margaret was like a second mother who was always there for me. I loved her very much.  She always had a marvellous huge garden wherever she lived and it was she who nurtured my own passion for gardening.

Most of her adult life she lived in New Orleans Louisiana. I have many wonderful childhood memories of visiting her and Uncle Art and my cousins Sandra and Jan.

Sandra was a few years older than me, so I looked up to her as a big sister and was very close to her.  Jan, being around 10 years younger was the adorable pretty little girl.

Sandra would take me on the Algiers ferry across the Mississippi to Canal street, where we would go shopping and walk around the French Quarter.

I could always count on aunt Margaret and sweet uncle Art to take us all to Cafe du Monde for beignets and cafe au lait,  made with chicory, both ancestral culinary traditions brought over from France.

Aunt Margaret used to tease me for eating the most beignets, served burning hot and liberally dusted with mounds of powdered sugar than flew everywhere all over my clothes and face.

Just before her 18th birthday, my beloved Sandra died of cardiac arrest due to medical negligence during surgery to remove wisdom teeth. This was the second child Margaret lost, the most painful suffering any human can experience.

With enough pain and grief to down anybody, she nevertheless reemerged miraculously back to living.   She later confided to me that she had no other choice and derived her strength and will from loving and raising Jan along with uncle Art’s love.

She would cook up huge pots of seafood gumbo chock full of oysters, shrimp and crabs.  Weekends at her camp down the Mississippi River in  Plaquemines Parish,  uncle Art would take me out on his boat to lay out his crab traps and then we would go fishing for speckled trout.

Later in the afternoon, he would take me back out to pull the crab nets, now usually full of the fattest blue crabs, both hard shell and soft.

The hard shells would go into a bubbling pot of spicy court bouillon and the soft shells left for Aunt Margaret to fry up along with the other catch of the day, sometimes a red snapper.

A few hours later she would emerge from her kitchen with up huge platters of crisp crunchy soft shell crabs, shrimp, speckled trout and another platter bursting with delcious hush puppies.

As age caught up with her, she and Art moved to Kingwood, Texas to be close to daughter Jan and eventually be with her grandson Mike and her adorable great-grandsons, Beau and Max.

She had a hard time leaving her lovingly tended garden and so with Jan’s help brought over some of her favourite plants, including the begonia she had been transplanting from garden to garden for many years.

Whenever I visited her in Kingwood, she would enjoy taking me on tour around her flower-filled courtyard, as we both reminisced about her beautiful one left behind in New Orleans.

In 2013, I travelled to Kingwood to see her again, this time in her assisted living apartment, knowing it would probably be the last time. She had been oxygen dependent for several years due to COPD and now her heart had worsened.

Before I left I asked Jan if I might have some clippings from her own lovely manicured back yard. One of them was Margaret’s begonia that Jan described as indestructible.

This pretty hardy begonia produces very dainty white, and then pink flowers according to its will I guess.  The large velvety green leaves are crimson on the back and the stems.

Margaret had initially dug up this begonia from her ageing mother in law’s garden in North Louisiana, which probably places the age of this plant back to the mid to late 1800s.

I  carefully buried the stems in wet paper towels and wrapped in aluminium foil then tucked them in my bag for the long plane trip back.  I took some clippings of ruby red coleus too.

Both survived the trip fairly well and rooted within a few weeks.   It was late spring when I set them out on my balcony.   Margaret enjoyed hearing about her robust begonia each time I called.

Margaret passed from this world the following year at age 91.  She lived to see her first great-granddaughter Maggie, seen with mother Lisa, and Jan between Margaret and uncle Art.

Since then, Margaret’s begonia not only flourished to a large bushy mother plant but for the past several years, I keep finding baby Margaret begonias all over!

Not only does this dainty plant propagate very easy, but once established will take over their adoptive pot.  Though most begonias are supposedly not freeze hardy, apparently Margaret’s begonia is!

I initially would repot each new plant plucked up, but now can’t keep up and am looking to giving the new ones away.  This begonia isn’t flashy, but a sturdy survivor that resembles the emotional resiliency of aunt Margaret.

Margaret, having been dealt the cruellest fate a mother could experience, had to be.  I draw some of my strength in coping with my own grief over my son from her.

I like to think each time I see a new baby begonia, that she is with me in spirit and wills me to follow her example and live life to the fullest despite my pain that she knew well and carried most of her adult life.

Margaret, who was also a gifted seamstress, liked to give away her hand sewed creations as much as her begonia likes to beget baby begonias.

One of her grandchildren Jessica, who recently gave birth to two beautiful twin girls,  inherited her talent and now is designing her own line of adorable children’s clothes, http://www.facebook.com/muddyfeetboutique/.

Uncle Art just celebrated his 98th birthday and despite two crashes on his motorized scooter,  warranting repairs and reprimands from Jan is doing great for his age.

Margaret had to be a “steel Magnolia” to make it through the cruel twists of her life. Now, she has bequeathed her “steel begonia” who despite her southern belle roots has adapted amazingly to the often rough Parisian winters.

Margaret could have been a poster child for blooming in whatever pot of life fate throws us in.   She was a powerhouse of strength, generosity wisdom and love.

Margaret begonias, despite their fragile looking little flowers, are hardy and resistant because they had to be to survive nature’s adversity all these years. Like her,  we are called to do the same.

I am grateful that I had her love in my life and now her super strong wonder woman begonia to remind me of her and her beauty.