Identifying a Flower by IM

This morning my daughter, Annie, IMed me with a message that she was furious at her younger son, Michael. It seems that while she was out of the room, he decided to pull the flowers off a little gift plant that her older son, Skylar, had brought home from school. This was a Mother's Day present so you can imagine how mad she was.

So when she messaged me she asked what to do. Would that kill the plant? Would it still grow without the flowers? Of course I had to ask what kind of plant it was. Well, she didn't know, but she had seen some at the WalMart garden center. Ok, so that was a start.

I haven't been to a WalMart in about 2 months. It's been even longer since I have been in the garden center there. So since Annie was worried about the flower, I had to do some detective work.Remember, this was all by IM. I asked what color were the flowers - pink. Ok. Then I asked about the leaves. Were they long and slender? No, more rounded. Were they thick? No. How many petals did the flower have? She said it had four. I could not remember any flowers that had four petals. I tried to envision what WalMart would have as flowers. Pansy, begonia? Neither

She even showed me a web-cam of the plant, sans the flower. It did not register with my mind. And I love plants. I kept drawing a blank. I looked a pictures of likely flowers. Nothing. Of course Annie was still worried because she did want to try to keep it. She admits that she has little luck growing plants.

So we kept IMing back and forth. I suggested that she ask the teacher this afternoon when she went to pick up Skylar from school. From what I could see of the picture, I told her that I thought the plant itself would grow ok. But the fact that I could not think of what plant it could be continued to bug me. I searched through pictures of spring flowers over and over. Then it hit me! Impatiens! "That's it", she said with a big WOOT!

Whew! Well, now that I figured out what it was, no problem. So I gave her some suggestions on how to keep it growing. As far as Michael - well I guess he is in the dog house now.

Never thought I would see the day that I would be identifying a plant by IM. Will wonders never cease. Maybe I should try CSI. Yeah, right.