Photo Of The Day: March 1, 2009

Last spring I bought a bougainvillea plant. My objective was to feel a sense of a Florida or Caribbean presence here on the New Jersey shore. It was full of flowers when I bought it, but within a few weeks they had all died. All summer long I nursed the plant, which had nice green leaves but no flowers. In the fall, I decided to bring it in the house under the what-do-I-have-to-lose theory. Sure enough, as winter arrived it started to blossom -- loaded with flowers, which then died and were replaced with twice as many flowers. Here's how one looked a couple of weeks ago, in the dead of winter, in the middle of February. The big decision now is, When the weather gets warm, do I put the plant back outside or just leave it indoors to continue flowering? For more pictures of flowers, visit Paul Scharff Photography.com.