Indoor Flowers
January and February are hard months for me. They are long and dark and cold. I always get to the end of January craving flowers and warm weather. This year I am trying to plan ahead so that I don’t fall into the same funk. I bought some cheap pots so that I can finally repot the plants that came in the gift basket that roster007 gave me last January when I was in need of flowers. I also have plans to water, repot, and care for all the other plants in our house. We do not lack plants for me to tend. Some of our plants are quite large since we’ve had them for more than 15 years. Most of the time they stand fairly neglected. This year I’m going to try to use them as a therapy against all the cold and gray outside.
That will appease my cravings for greenery and the smell of wet earth. But I also long for flowers. I bought a few paperwhite bulbs from a local garden center. They’ll bloom and provide some scent for the house, but paperwhites are all white which doesn’t satisfy the longing for color. So I keep staring at gardeningbulbs.com’s indoor bulb basket page and trying to justify the expenditure of $50 for the Christmas Flower Bulb assortment. I probably won’t be able to get that one, but I might be able to spare $25 for the Festive Flower Bulb Assortment. I can always plant the bulbs outside next fall once they’ve died back, right?
Then I think about how much money we spent over Christmas and how much we need to curb frivolous spending. And I feel guilty for wanting more things when I already have so much. The economy solution would be for me to trudge out into my yard and dig up a few of the thousands of bulbs that I have growing out there. They’ve been at sub-freezing temperatures for a good six weeks now, so they’ll probably be plenty ready to grow. The flowers will be familiar rather than exciting and new, but they’ll still be flowers in January which is what I need. Maybe I’ll take pictures of the whole process and document the growth of my January flowers.