Tails From Provence

Many of the bloggers I follow do a Sunday Stills post each week which are always very pretty and sometimes thought provoking.  Inspired by this, I’ve decided to have a go at it myself.

I’m not particularly good at keeping house plants alive, but I have two Christmas Cacti (Schlumbergera to you plant heads) which have been with me for a long time now.  Despite my sporadic watering and non-existent care (I’ve no idea when I last re-potted them, for example), they reward me with a wonderful display of blooms, usually twice a year.

They were both covered in buds four weeks ago – just as we were packing up all of our possessions for the big move.  I loaded them carefully into the horsebox, well supported, so they wouldn’t fall over, and not rubbing off anything, so the buds wouldn’t get damaged.  They had three days of “dark” as we loaded in Cork, travelled and unloaded in Provençe.  They also had three days of erratic temperatures, cool in Ireland and Northern France and then extremely warm here.  I was pretty convinced that all of this abuse would be too much for them and that their buds would shrivel up and fall off, but much too my surprise, they didn’t and they’ve provided me with my first Sunday Still subject matter.

The pale peach one, I rescued from a supermarket about ten years ago – it was on “Special” because it was nearly dead.

It’s such a delicate colour.

A teeny drop of nectar is making its way down this flower.

The plant with darker flowers is the descendant of a plant which has been in my parents home as long as I remember (it’s still there).  This one has been with me for at least twenty years.

It’s a little bit behind the pale peach plant and only has two flowers open right now, but I’m pretty sure it’s not going to let me down and will have a super display in a few more days.