Winter flowers

Happy New Year!

I’m only a little late.

If you’ve followed my (admittedly infrequent) blog posts, you’ll have figured out that I enjoy gardening and love flowers. That means it’s a pretty grim situation now and for the next few months as winter has settled in for the long stretch between the holidays and that hell known as Spring Mud Season. The lawns still show a little green and the evergreens are as ever, but deciduous trees appear lifeless and the shrubs are stripped and sad-looking.

Lucky for me, I have some indoor flowers to brighten things up.

 

 

The prayer plant is known mostly for its colorful leaves–note the red veins and light green feathering down the middle of the background leaves–and it’s not a prodigious bloomer.  One article I read referred to the flowers as “insignificant.” I beg to differ. They are only a half inch or so long, but they remind me of tiny orchids and I love them.

 

 

 

 

My African violets are blooming again after having slowed down a bit over the fall. Like most of my other indoor plants, they’re on a ladder shelf by the south-facing backdoor, the site of the best light in the house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, there’s the kalanchoe–I always pronounced it kuh-lan-cho until I learned differently this very day–a succulent that supposedly thrives under conditions of “benign neglect.” I planted it in a very loose blend of perlite and vermiculite and water infrequently, and it has taken off flower-wise after having rested over the summer and fall. It’s loaded with bud clusters, some of which have just started to open.

 

 

So that’s it. Just enough color to tide me over until the temperatures warm and we have daylight after 5pm. I took a little kalanchoe shoot and am trying to start it in another pot–so far, so good I think. I mean, it’s still green. I have an indoor palm that seems to be happy, a schefflera that I had to cut back before it took over the dining room, and heartleaf philodendra everywhere.

But I do love my flowers.