Happiness is a butterfly

A row of Camia growing in our garden.

When I first gave Mom a list of priority plants to buy, it included White Butterfly ginger (Hedychium coronarium). I chose this plant because I loved the images I saw on the internet plus I was intrigued by the fragrance of its flowers. The articles I've read all say its flowers have a very sweet scent.

So off went Mom and Dad to the garden stores looking for this plant without expectations of finding it. As soon as they showed the picture to one seller, she exclaimed: "Ah! Camia!"

Ah, Camia! What a joyful feeling I had when I learned that it is the one they call Camia in the Philippines. It's like rediscovering something I've discovered before. Despite not recognizing it from the pictures in the internet, I know Camia. I've seen and touched it in my younger years but only the flowers, never the plant where they come from. The plant is indeed available locally and quite easy to grow. I never imagined I will be looking for it someday. I never even imagined growing it someday in our garden.

The Camia (White Butterfly ginger) flowers.

I love the White Butterfly ginger, it is truly a very sweet-smelling flower. It is so fragrant that it is stringed as leis, sold outside churches in the Philippines as a fitting offering to God and his saints.

I'm just so happy that I got reacquainted with the White Butterfly ginger.

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you"
Nathaniel Hawthorne