Awww Anne,,,,,you're welcome!! You know, I look at it all the time and it is not that I don't like it. I don't know what the issue is. Never did that with a plant before. Especially a violet!!!!! Well, I think that piece would have broken off all by itself had I not done it on purpose! (oops!!!! did I say that out loud????) Well, I knew you liked it and honestly you don't know how close you came to getting the entire plant!!! Seriously! But glad the piece is doing well for you! I do hope this week is better for you. Slooooow down and take it easy. You know you are also recovering from knee surgery. They say it takes at least a year!!!! I know you are walking well etc, but you also need to take it easy sometimes!!!!! THAT is where eye candy comes in!!!!! (and this forum!!) lol Tomorrow is plant day for me. Gonna work on my plants and go as far as I can. Maybe even take a few pix! If I do I will post them. Rosie

It can take a few weeks to a month, I've experienced ...

Jeff,,,,they choose to have a sales department that doesn't give a tinker's darn about what will make their CUSTOMERS happy. Have you seen their operation????? Take a look and get back with me. This is no longer a mom & pop company operating a few greenhouses in their back yard. Terri I will respectfully disagree. You cannot go to their website and "check" for any degree of certainty. Look at the other recent threads, and you will find us, the african violet serious customers, advising newbies that even if the pot has an Optimara label, you should always label it a "NOID-might be Opt. this". As has been stated, some people don't even want to trade for or put Opt. leaves in Round Robins. Why is that???? Because with no id to begin with they don't want to take a chance of passing along a misidentified plant leaf! And look at some of their color pix. Can you reeeeaaaallllyyyy tell the difference between a few of them???? I don't think so. I know I have my doubts about some of the colors and MY perception of what they are. Do I buy Optimara's? Yes I have, because they have a few I am in love with. Fortunately the ones I love CAN be ID'd because they are that one of a kind. Opt. MyDelight, Opt. Trinidad ll, Opt. MySensation and a few more. But the mainstream Opt's???? Good luck. Ok, I go into Lowe's. I look at all the plants (I am not just a violet person! haha). Other house plants are labeled. Outdoor plants are labeled. Rose tags say Rose Oklahoma, Rose President Lincoln, etc. Liriope is labeled as such. Hosta has a name to it beyond "Hosta"!!!! Do you think the average gardener cares what named Marigold, Hosta, Salvia, Helloborus they are purchasing??? NO! More of them don't care than do care. And these are things that will come up every year as long as they are taken care of! But the point is,,,they have real name tags that tell you all about the name!!!!! Honestly they just want to get it planted for color, landscaping etc. They are not passing them on by cuttings to the extent we are doing in basements, windowsills and any other spot we can find. But guess what.... Optimara says African Violet. That's it. Something that they know people set up lights for, propagate, learn about with various techniques,,,,,they know we cherish and keep and trade them with our friends,,,,. And they can't give us a TAG!!!!! A lousy name TAG that can be mass produced cheaper than we can buy 100 for online!!!!! ($1.78 free ship just in case you want to know!) Who do they think they are? They are snubbing the very people that make them who and what the heck they are!!!!! They labeled them back in the day!!! I still have some of the old tags! They got too big for their britches and thumbed their nose at the very people that got them there. I don't want to hear their excuses for no label. Worker's can't read and mix them up. BULL SQUIRT!!!! Then hire better workers!!!!! NO EXCUSES!!!! Ok off my soapbox now, not yelling at you Terri, or anyone else. I have said this very same stuff before about Optimara when this subject has come up. This is not a personal attack toward anyone except Holtkamp/Optimara. And any other company who does this. Shame on them. I am stopping now and I will post no more in this thread with my opinion about this subject. Whew. I am done. Rosie

I've just been scrolling through this forum and stumbled upon this thread. It is so interesting to hear everybody's stories. So often we share our specific questions and present situations, but without the background, which says so much about all of us as human beings with histories. Yolanda, your great-aunt sounds just like mine. Exactly! Anything to do with dirt and experimentation, right where she was, Amanda was messing around with it, and amassed a minor library about gardening. It was on account of Aunt Amanda that my Mom had African violets when I was a little girl. I only remember violets being around for a few years when I was a child, but I know my great-aunt had a lot to do with my Mom's having them at all. [When I think back to what Mom was trying to do with those violets, and consider what I have since learned about them, I think their being relatively short-lived in our house was because all we had was natural light. Where we lived in Anchorage, Alaska, in the winter the shortest day length is about 4.5 hours - and that's sunup to sundown. During the rest of the day in midwinter the sun is always low on the horizon when it shines at all; and on those days the colors of the landscape are mostly blue and gold, not even really white. This quality of light lives romantically in my memory of childhood, but it's not conducive to plant life. No way a violet is going to survive that, even though anything bought in the late Alaska winter would totally thrive even in the darkest north window, with you-can-read-a-book daylight from 4:00 am to midnight by summer solstice. It's no wonder she accepted the science of the situation and moved on.] I went to Walmart in early March (pre-lockdown) to look for an orchid. I needed flowers - and I like LOTS - when I had only one orchid in bloom and all the amaryllises were nearly done. When I saw no decent orchids but about 5 African violets to choose from - all slightly abused but looking like they could recover - I picked one and brought it home, because of Mom in the 1960s, because of Aunt Amanda in the 1940s and 50s. (Quick edit: If Aunt Amanda were alive today, she'd be 122. She was born in 1898. I'm so privileged to have known her. One of the things she taught me in the 1980's was How To Chop an Onion. :)) She was so special that my cousin named his daughter after her.) Joan, west central MN, USA