Sunday 21 October 2012

Sunday Stills

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.

6 comments:

  1. Fantastic photos, beautiful flowers.

    I know "Sunday Stills" will want to have your link to your photos, so everyone can appreciate them.

    For a fast link to "Sunday Stills Inspiration" go to my post, click the "Sunday Stills" link, then when on "Sunday Stills" post your url to the comment section there.

    People are going to really appreciate your lovely photos!

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  2. Thanks SL, I did not know there was a "Sunday Stills Inspiration" site, I decided to do this just to make me look for photographic inspiration outside of horses :D
    I'll follow up that link, thank you.

    I'm using Times font, normal size. I would have said Arial before I checked, it's my favourite, and I think the most legible, and I might change back. Font is not something I pay a lot of attention to normally, I will watch it more closely!

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  3. I have some rescue cacti too :-). Welcome to Sunday Stills!

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  4. Was happy to see your beautiful photos link on Sunday Stills site. I see their next subject is "Halloween". I'm sure that will prove interesting, especially for people with kids.

    Thanks for your font info. Will try, again.

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  5. Yeah, I'm already looking out for Halloweeny stuff, but I suspect it's not really celebrated here. It is a big night in Ireland, in fact the Irish celebration of Samhain was around long before Halloween or even All Souls Night.

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