Poinsettia

This is the poinsettia I bought over a month ago. I always bought one for my mother's birthday on 10th December to brighten her home for visitors before Christmas decorations went up. I have continued to buy one for myself.

Yes, now I'm going to bang on about poinsettias again! I want all my friends to get as much enjoyment as they can from these seasonal, decorative plants. If you've heard it all before please skip the next paragraph.


Poinsettias do not like cold shocks! Please don't buy them from those shops that make a display of them right in front of the wide-open doors. I buy mine every year from a popular garden centre in Ambleside. I go prepared! I take with me a huge sheet of bubble wrap. When I'm ready to leave I choose a nice big one and, after the cashier puts it in a cellophane sleeve, I swaddle it in bubble wrap before venturing out into the cold December air. And look: a month on, it has hardly lost any leaves, and certainly not any of the attractive red bracts. I didn't even do anything to edit the colour of it from my RAW file (they aren't made pretty by the camera like jpegs are on Auto or phone settings.)

I'm blipping this today on the 10th anniversary of Mum's death. Those years have flown by. I'm so glad I was blipping before that to record the joys of her life as well as the painful bits. (Thank you Blipfoto.)

The highlight of today was going up to the city for a punch biopsy. The Dermatology department wanted to take a small core of tissue from my arm to rule out some skin problems I may have.

"What size do you want?" the nurse asked the doctor. "4mm." he replied.

Hmmm! I know exactly what 4mm looks like, I'll just keep my eyes shut! To be fair, once the anaesthetic had been injected there was no more pain. "Keep the plaster on for 2 days and don't get it wet." What? It was peeling off before I got home! Micropore applied and an appointment for the removal of stitches in 2 weeks. I used to like taking stitches out of cats! I'd love to do it myself.