For my birthday and Christmas, I ran out of things to say when people asked me what I would like. It didn't seem sensible to answer "a Bosendorfer Concert-size Grand Piano and a house big enough to put it in", so I said what I would really like would be flowers.
And I was much, much 'righter' than I realised.
My birthday flowers from my parents give me endless pleasure; they arrived like this one cold Autumnal evening. A camellia on the left, and Christmas Rose (hellebore?) on the right. The huge white blooms are giant plastic roses that my father stuck into the pots "to make them look more interesting"!
I have since removed the roses to the back garden where they are looking surprised, stuck into a patio tub full of weeds.
Just before Christmas I re-potted the birthday plants into slightly larger pots. The camellia is covered in huge buds, and I have already had two bright red flowers come and go. The Christmas Rose was totally pot-bound. It responded to its new home with great enthusiasm, and now looks like this.
For Christmas my father suddenly appeared with a pink cyclamen and a pot of stubby green hyacinth shoots. The cyclamen is now just beginning to fade, but the hyacinths are looking grand. This must be the first year that I have had hyacinths that stand up more-or-less straight.
In the garden, as well as the plastic roses, the Christmas Day snowdrops (so-called because they tend to arrive just in time for Christmas Day) are looking 'blooming'. I've even found a couple of flowers on the little rosemary shrub.
A few flowers just makes all the difference to a dull and manky grey, dreary day.
My next job is to deal with a bucket of sprouting bulbs found lurking in my parent's garage. They are moving soon, so he didn't want them. I might evict the weeds from underneath the roses and put them in there. I wonder what kind of bulbs they are...
Thanks, everyone.
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