Winter Foliage

Some minor happenings inside and out ~

I replaced the petunias in the hanging basket with heather and pansies, two flowering plants that will keep flowering late into fall. I was first introduced to heather as a cool/cold weather plant when visiting England and Germany. It seems that most of my visits to Europe have occurred during the cold and grey months of October or December, and I would see flower boxes bursting with blooming heather. Heather's a plant that grows along the coasts of England and Scotland ~ it thrives in the cool wet weather and acidic soils, and it doesn't particularly like heat, drought, or fertile soils. As a result, it's not a popular plant in the nurseries around here, and it took me quite a while to find some. I don't expect it to make it through the whole year {although that would be awesome}, I'm just hoping that it stays green for most of the winter.

Pansies were something I started paying attention to when I lived in Philadelphia, where the winters are generally just a smudge warmer and shorter than they are in central PA. Some years, you can plant pansies in your fall pots in Philly where they'll thrive, as winter arrives the blooms may stop, but the foliage stays green, and then as soon as the cold winter days are ending, the pansies will be the first to bloom again in the spring! Of course, if the winter's too harsh, they may not survive, and once the heat of summer comes, they're toast. Again, pansies weren't the easiest bloom to find around here ~ the nurseries are practically giving mums away, but not pansies, unless they sold out?

Inside our Christmas cactus decided to dress up for Halloween:: This guy was full of buds when my mom bought him last year, but most of them fell off without opening. Maybe it was the commotion of changing locations from nursery to store to kitchen table? I'm excited to see that this year we haven't lost a bud yet!