National Poinsettia Day

Wikipedia says that December 12 is National Poinsettia Day in the United States. Since the poinsettia is one of my favorite symbols of the holiday season, I decided to mark the occasion with an off topic post . Two years ago I received a poinsettia plant as a gift and when the holidays had passed, we found a place in our garden on the side of the house. Last year I took this photo and used it for our holiday cards.

When we lived in upstate New York, I often kept holiday poinsettia plants for more than one season. We had the perfect spot for growing them indoors, a living room full of natural daylight. We so seldom used the room that the darkness of winter nights was not disturbed by artificial lighting. The darkness told the poinsettias it was time to bloom again and they did spectacularly.

It was much easier in Florida with Mother Nature doing the watering and providing just the right amount of sunlight and darkness for the plants to thrive.

You can see that we do not cruise to get away from the winter weather.