Red and Green

December...again...another year almost over. The older I become the faster the clock spins. Well, I guess that's life and yet I recall the days of my childhood when December had to be the longest slowest month of the year. Christmas took forever to arrive and the hours and days crept by like huge, lumbering tortoises.

photo above...The mother poinsettia plant, she's had such a hard time of it.

Now everywhere I look I see the lights of Christmas bedecking homes, stores and malls. Fresh green pines are stacked on every corner tree lot, in front of grocery stores and in the nursery section of every home improvement center. And the poinsettias are red and green and everywhere.

My own little poinsettia bush has had a harrowing time of it. When it was first purchased I thought I had inspected it carefully but once I got it home I realized that a couple of stems seemed to droop. Even after a drenching of water they still remained limp and visually pathetic. I removed it from the bright red foil that decorated its common plastic pot and noticed that the wilted stems were broken. Being the frugal nut that I can sometimes be, I placed the stems into a small vase of water, it seemed wasteful to throw out the pretty red and green foliage. With access to water the wilted stems soon revived and lasted well through the holidays. After several weeks I noticed that they actually had swollen nodes and promises of future roots.

Well not to go on and on, let me just say I tried planting all of the poinsettias out in our garden, they were doing fairly well and the odds that they would all become healthy plants would have been high. Would have been ! Nature never counted on such things as a careless window washer or a couple of clumsy gentleman who came to fix our flowerbed sprinkler system. Small woody shrubs do not take kindly to being stepped upon, especially stepped upon repeatedly.

Eventually we lost the 3 new cuttings and the mother plant was close to mortally damaged. For the last 2 years I've cared for her and nurtured her through drought and freezing weather. This Christmas she has thanked me with a burst of red foliage. What a lovely way to say thank you.

Photo above...close up of "Poor Petuna" my poinsettia that was always in the wrong place at the wrong time.