February already?! It feels like Christmas has barely past, that 2021 was still a newborn just past the birth canal of 2020, let alone now a senile monarch passing the throne to 2022. We have yet to lock horns with winter, a few days of snow here and there, fleeting and flown, but soon I expect crocus and Scilla and budding daffodils raising their heads.
For now, it remains the duty of the Christmas cacti, or Thanksgiving cacti, or whatever the things are, to bring color to a brown landscape and brighten the morning. My collection, as it could be termed, of Christmas cacti expanded yet again this year, with the addition of a pale yellow cultivar to the whites, reds, and pinks, and one beautiful new small plant that bears blossoms of an unmistakably orange hue.
All are blooming again, now for the second time this year, with the exception of two. One is the orange variety which sulks in the kitchen where Mrs. ProfessorRoush has not allowed it enough sunlight. It is, I'm sorry to say, a
Schlumbergera which is...slumbering...in a post-gluttony phase of bloom. And I'm chagrined because I was sure I had a picture of it, taken at the peak of color, but, alas, the picture is gone, lost I say, to the silicon and ceramic wafers of computer memory. I'll try to edit this post later as it blooms again and add it in.
The second current nonbloomer is the very fuchsia variety I've had for a decade. It has also bloomed, and is in bud again, but I've stolen
the picture here from an earlier blog entry; purloined electrons to jog your memory.
For now,
veuillez m'excuser, but you must content yourself with the white, yellow, red, and fuchsia varieties. The reds and fuchsias are, I recognize, only distinguished from each another by subtleties, small differences in the percentage of white on each petal or the shade of carmine or cardinal it most resembles, but I celebrate the individuality of all. The reddest is at the top of this blog entry, while two other varieties, each a little more white to the petals, also vie for the "best Christmas colors" display.
Ladies and Gentleman, I give you the colors of February, hues of life to carry you through to that first glimpse of yellow daffodils....
