Eat Your Heart Out Georgia O'Keefe!

{Note: The following blog post is rated PG-13 and may not be suitable for young audiences. Reader discretion is advised.}

I like Georgia O'Keefe. She was unique and her work was larger than life- you probably know her best by her up-close-and-personal paintings of flowers.

Anyway, you probably already know this, but some say O'Keefe's paintings were ... hm, how shall I put this delicately...reminiscent of genitalia. There. I said it. See for yourself. 

source 

Don't worry, this isn't an art history lesson... but it IS about the weirdest plant I've ever owned...one that Georgia O'Keefe, if she were still alive, might have a field day with!

Remember my pretty little Lipstick Plant? My sweet little plant? So pretty and green.

Last year sometime, my little plant got one or two tiny dark purple flowers. Nothing too exciting happened with them and I didn't think much more of it. Then this year, around Thanksgiving maybe, a whole slew of teeny fuzzy purple buds started popping up on the plant. They took a long time to grow, but they kept growing taller until finally, it looked like something was growing up from inside the plant. "Cool," I thought. "Like a tube of lipstick."

Day by day the "inner flower" made its way up, until one evening I was walking past, while on the phone with my mom, and I stopped mid-sentence and blurted, "Ohmygoshmom! My plant! The flower looks like...well it looks like...a ... a penis! I'msorrybutthat'swhatitlookslike!"

 

I felt a little dirty looking at it. Although, that didn't stop me from snapping a few pictures on my cell phone and texting them to a few people, my mom included (hey, she asked!). 

Yes, some people do say it also looks like a thumb or finger. OK. Fine. I'll go with that. I wasn't thinking anything else would happen until a friend said she was curious to see what would happen when it bloomed. Cripes. It might do more!

And bloom she did. The next morning I woke up to this:

Pretty, huh?

Appropriately enough, I had a whole bouquet of what I lovingly refer to as "penis flowers" just in time for National Condom Day.

This was taken after a couple of them had bloomed...

What a weird little plant. I kind of love her.

Erm...wait...should she be a he??? Or perhaps a he-she??