My family have remarked on the absence of posts since September so I have hastily gathered a Christmas garland for them. What would I highlight at this season of the year? I will start with my Christmas cactus. It is a cutting from friends in Scotland and last winter survived an accident when I knocked off its one and only flower bud. It flourished in the dry summer, put on many more leaves, came back inside (as I have posted) and I am now rewarded with pendant pale pink blooms.
Second, comes our 'split' strelitzia which has responded to its re-potting and cooler environment with the orange tip of a yet to open flower bud at first mistaken, to my dismay, as a leaf beginning to die before it had unfurled. A misreading of the experts led me to expect this recent development would take between four and six years, but I am glad to be proved wrong. Perhaps it is not technically a 'new' plant but the biological twin of my family's which is blooming at this moment - though bare of festive ornamentation here.
Looking outside our front window I see, as readers might have expected, our collection of presents and 'rescue plants' - the Christmas roses in bloom, the recently planted polyanthus knocked down to 10p for a box of six (we bought three boxes), the white heather and the iris reticulata, tulips saved from last year just beginning to poke pointed cones above the soil, daffodils and hyacinths likewise.
And round the door, in defiance of the weather, buds our rose 'Golden Showers' which still holds the faint fragrance and promise of summer to come before the bitter winds and snow-laden winds of January begin to blow.
