Red as a winter color

I think this year the Christmas amaryllis will come into bloom for next year’s Valentine’s Day, or thereabouts. I believe we missed the timing on the cool to cold dark period of rest needed to support the December flowers. Instead, the Better Half cleverly ordered bunches of holly from Oregon, the kind with real red berries that we have to be sure the dogs don’t eat. The place looks downright festive and it will be fun to see how close to Valentine’s the amaryllis blooms. One of my longstanding frustrations with Minnesota is that much of the state, including where  we live, is borderline or worse for holly plants. Winterberry just isn’t the same.

sometimes, Christmas brings amaryllis blooms

Photo by J. Harrington

Weather permitting (heh, heh), tomorrow afternoon I’ll use the rear blade on the tractor to clear much of the accumulated precipitation from the drive. I don’t think I can drag the trash and recycling cans through the township snow plow’s leavings at the end of the driveway and, with luck, the slop will still be soft enough to move tomorrow afternoon. We might even need to take another snow removal run Friday before it gets really cold. Some of us think we’d be much  better off if the intermittent drought concentrated in the winter months and left spring and summer precipitation alone.

There are still some odds and ends of holiday shopping to get finished, and coordination on who’s getting  what for whom on which list, complicated, a little, because our son’s birthday is also December 25 and Christmas presents must be distinguished from birthday presents. Unless there’s a radical shift in the weather trend, December 25 looks like it will be sunny and very cold. One of my Christmas wishes is that it be sunny and not too cold.

Amaryllis

By Connie Wanek

A flower needs to be this size 

to conceal the winter window, 

and this color, the red 

of a Fiat with the top down, 

to impress us, dull as we've grown. 

Months ago the gigantic onion of a bulb 

half above the soil 

stuck out its green tongue 

and slowly, day by day, 

the flower itself entered our world, 

closed, like hands that captured a moth, 

then open, as eyes open, 

and the amaryllis, seeing us, 

was somehow undiscouraged. 

It stands before us now 

as we eat our soup; 

you pour a little of your drinking water 

into its saucer, and a few crumbs 

of fragrant earth fall 

onto the tabletop. 

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