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By Lynn Minneman, Staff Writer 6:21 PM Wednesday, December 23, 2009

The Christmas season reminds me of hope, so today, on Christmas Eve, I want to share a story about a flower that just will not give up.

An Englewood “neighbor” called and left a voicemail message about a “lily that keeps hanging on, and on, and on.”

The caller was the mother of my previous neighbor (Jill) and also the receptionist (Jo Lyn) at my son’s pediatrician’s office. She was also my husband’s favorite teacher “way back when” in kindergarten at Clayton Elementary.

Caroline Spicer and her husband, Howard (who friends call “Slick”), are retired school teachers. Caroline retired from the Northmont School District with 28 years of service teaching kindergarten, then second grade.

According to Spicer, everyone she knows is amazed that she even has this lily because originally her grandmother owned it. She said this lily blooms and thrives in spite of often lacking water or extra nourishment.

“The reason I know it has to be at least 65 years old is because my grandmother had it and that is how we received it — that year when she passed away (1945), it came to my mother’s home and was put in my south bedroom window when I was 15.”

“When mother died in 1974, the lily then came to my own house, and I have had it ever since.”

Caroline Spicer is now 79. But, that isn’t even the “extraordinary” part of the story. To Spicer’s knowledge, it has only been repotted once.

“The soil is the same with only one repotting within the last 20 years. ... It has had the same dirt all those years, and it is not really nourished much, except the one time when I did repot it — that was probably in the early ’90s — I may even have used new dirt.”

Caroline said the flower gets lots of fresh air in the summer.

“It sits pretty much in the shade outside and is not in direct sunlight during the warmer months — I sometimes add geraniums, and it probably gets more attention in the summer outside, than inside the house.”

Spicer said, “The foliage gets really full and green, and it most always blooms in November — right before Thanksgiving.”

But this year has been even more unusual.

“I brought it in from our front porch on Oct. 20 and noticed the first budding stalk and even marked that date on my calendar.”

Spicer said soon there were four more stalks with buds and each of them had two blooms.

“Some years there has been a stalk or two with three blooms, but all of a sudden this year as I looked at the soil, I saw five more stalks pushing out, and those have all opened gradually with the last two blooms on the 11th or 12th of December.”

Spicer said that makes 20 blooms in 2009. “I feed it only water ... sometime a little Miracle Grow — but that is really old ... and I water it when I remember — it is a survivor, I guess.”

Caroline said a funny thing happened one year when her family lived in Ludlow Falls.

“I had read you should put them (lilies) away and let them ‘rest’ in the dark ... so I put it back in a closet and had completely forgotten about it ... when I pulled it out I realized it had actually bloomed in the darkness!”

Spicer said the lily originally came from Paulding County, a northwestern corner of Ohio, in a little rural town called Arthur, where her grandmother lived.

Contact this columnist at (937) 609-4152 or newscommunity@ hotmail.com.

HEREABOUTS lynn minneman

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