Poinsettia Time

Every year at this time I enjoy visiting the nursery to pick out a few poinsettias. I start my visit by wandering through the section of evergreen boughs and wreaths, enjoying the wonderful smell of the greenery. Then I explore the gift area, overflowing with Christmas ornaments and other goodies. Finally I reach the flowers. They’re in a huge area – rows and rows of assorted varieties of beautiful, brightly-coloured poinsettias.

It took me a long time last weekend to pick just two flowers. In fact, during the time I dithered over choosing the very best poinsettias in the entire place, other people had taken their nursery purchases home, eaten lunch, gone to the mall and purchased three or four Christmas gifts.

But that’s okay. I was soaking up some of the beauty of the season and in the end, I took two gorgeous plants home. One is pink

 

and the other is a red and white, sort of candy cane-coloured plant. (It was hard to get photos that captured the poinsettias’ true colours without natural light, but the sun is just coming up when I leave for work in the morning and gone when I get home, so there was little to be had.)

 

I published a post about poinsettias last year on November 30th too.

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Sunday Snapshot – Here It Comes

Yesterday morning we had our first dusting of snow. It didn’t last long – just long enough to remind everyone that Christmas will soon be here. Not that anyone needed more reminders. Canadian retailers have begun copying the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales of our southern neighbours, although not to the same extent. On a trip to the local mall on Friday evening, I found many stores with thirty or forty percent off storewide. And on Saturday evening, Mark’s Work Warehouse had twenty percent off everything, including already reduced items, from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. When I entered the store around 5:30, the line-up at cash stretched across the front of the store, down the side and more than half way across the back. Note to anyone who hoped I might be picking up something from Mark’s for them for Christmas: it didn’t happen.

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