My Streptocarpus and P. Ardens

I've been feeling rather deflated today after the long build-up to the council meeting on Monday. I have been chairing a working group and I presented our reported to the council for it to take a vote. The report was accepted and it was agreed for the town to start a process of preparing a neighbourhood plan. This is quite a big deal and will take about fifteen months to complete if the referendum on its outcome receives approval of 51% of the those who vote. I will explain more in due course, but right now I am just relieved that all the hard work we have put in has been successful and also very positive about the implications.

So this is rather a last minute blip. The light was failing at nearly 8pm as I was preparing my supper and I decided to try to use the last of it to photograph my house plants which are all in in flower at the moment. These ones are gathered on the dining table and can't stay there for much longer although I like the proximity so I can look at all there intricate detail and colour.

There are two pelargoniums, the small leaved P. Ardens with red and nearly black patterns, which is a quite rare plant and a bit tricky to propagate apparently. The large flowered pelargonium is rather a bog standard one but with a particular shade of red that I really like. The purple flower is one of a range of different coloured Streptocarpus plants which I have growing again and this is the first to come into flower. They are all flower quite profusely if 'happy;' so I'm pleased that they have all come into flowering together.

The P. Ardens has never flowered as profusely and whenever I look at its tiny but exquisite flowers I am in total admiration. Everyone I know who sees them in flower falls in love with them. They have very tiny delicate stamens and anthers which are difficult to see here. I must try a good macro shot of them.

There is also another plant flowering which volunteered once on another house plant which I bought. A tiny offshoot must have been dropped onto another plant in the nursery and ever since it has been part of my collection and I now have a few different plants all over the house. It is a succulent called Ledebouria socialis, the silver squill or wood hyacinth and is a geophytic species of bulbous perennial plant native to the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. I always like to see its tiny flowers. It has a bulb like base from which green leaves grow with mottled white patches on it. But it is the array of tiny bulb like flowers that hang from profuse stems that I love. It too deserves a close up blip one day.


Here is close up of the P. Ardens from 2010, which was my third blip!