Catharanthus roseus/ Vinca rosea

There are the flowering plants that require a lot of tender loving care - you need to water then just so, you need to pluck dead-heads, you need to prune the plants, you need to feed them the right mix of manure, and you need to see they do not get infected by the various pests waiting to prey on them. If you do all of that, they occasionally reward you with a flower or two. My plumerias fall firmly into that category - I have one that has flowered only once in the three years it has been with me, and another that has never flowered. I love them, and tend to them, and hope that they will reward me with flowers some day.

There are those flowering plants, and then there is the periwinkle. I never even acquired the periwinkle- it must have been brought to my fifth floor apartment in the belly of a crow or by the wind. It took root in a pot I could barely reach, and I knew about it only after it gave out the first flowers.



In the years it has been with me, it has known only neglect, but it doesn't seem to know or care that the water I give it is given with sheer indifference. It takes what it gets, and it thrives. Never has a day gone when there hasn't been at least one periwinkle coloured flower on the plant, and when I last checked, there were a whole bunch of bushy shoots springing up all around it.
Unless something drastic happens, I can look forward to many months or years of flowers from the plant- not for nothing is it called 'sadabahar' in Hindi - 'always flowering'.

And isn't the same true for everything else- there are people and thing that need a lot of care, and there are people and thing which thrive in any environment. One is cherished. Unfortunately, the other is almost taken for granted.