Last cyclamen

I have a long and, until recently, not particularly happy relationship with plants in the genus Cyclamen. There are about 20 Cyclamen species, all of them native to various parts of Europe and Africa, and I got turned on to their possibilities in the garden when I was involved in the American Rock Garden Society. One can buy the bulbs from which these pretty plants grow, but I, being a cheapskate, preferred to try to raise them from seed. I never succeeded, and when I finally broke down and bought some Cyclamen tubers, they never came out of the ground. Perhaps the ones I got were not hardy; perhaps they were eaten by mice. But I never stopped trying, and last year, I achieved something of a success with a set of bulbs that, according to the label, were members of the Cyclamen coum clan, a species that is reliably hardy in our area. In the fall of 2012, we actually got some Cyclamen leaves. This year, we did even better, with the exceptionally handsome variegated foliage followed by delightful little nodding blossoms. I spotted the first flower in mid-October, and, even after several hard frosts, the Cyclamens are still at it. So what if success took me more than 25 years to achieve... I'm nothing if not patient. Besides, Cyclamens are worth the wait.