In the spring when I was ordering seeds and plants, I added a treat on my order, a passion flower vine.  Each year I try to get one new and unusual plant, just for fun.  If you haven’t ever seen a passion flower, they are, indeed unusual.

The plant arrived around the end of May, the point when we can be fairly certain we’ll have no more frost. (I know, that sounds really late but that’s what works in the upper regions of NY state.)  It looked a little sad when I opened the box, but I figured it just needed a good drink of water and it would perk up.  Watering did little good, as the plant was dead within  a few days.      🙁

I called the company from which I had ordered the plant and they offered to send me another.  Great!     🙂

A few days later they called to say they were sorry but they didn’t have any more passion flower vines for this year.     🙁

Sometime in July I went to a local farm stand/nursery and  right by the entrance they had a beautiful 12 foot high passion flower vine.  It wasn’t for sale, just for display, and they didn’t have any others for sale.  There was one beautiful bloom on the vine but not much more.  I vaguely thought of asking them if I could have a blossom to photograph but since there was only one, I decided that wasn’t a good idea.  Then last week, I went again, and the vine was just covered with blossoms.  As I was checking out with my blueberries and corn, I asked the young girl if I could possibly have a blossom or two from the passion flower vine.  I explained that I was a photographer and worked with flowers.  Her expression made it obvious that that was definitely a question she had never heard before but after a few seconds, said “sure, I guess”.     🙂

Originally, I was going to simply photograph the flower and not create any mandalas, because it’s already a mandala, quite naturally.  But I couldn’t resist.  🙂

How quickly can you pick out which one is the original flower?