Holiday flowers

Hello my friends and I hope you all had a great Christmas.

I have published very little on the blog in December. It is always a hard month for me and my mood has been, as we say here, ‘up and down like a bride’s nightie’. My enthusiasm has been on and off like a lunchtime stripper with fifteen pubs to do.

I have done my best to keep in touch with a few of you by email (and those chats have been very welcome ) and have posted on Instagram. My doctor was expecting to start to take me off Citalopram this month but my fatigue was causing great concern culminating in a full suite of blood tests. The good news is that everything they tested ( thyroid, prostate, liver function, cholesterol and numerous others) came back either normal or excellent. Suspicions about my vitamin B12 were unfounded as that was normal too. Vitamin D being low was the only flagged result so am now on supplements. Amusingly I was so tired taking them on the second day that I fumbled opening the bottle and dropped the whole thing, open, into the sink full of water and had to go buy another pack….

So basically I am physically great. I just feel half dead. I settled down this evening to write one email and this blog post and so far it has taken 3 hours. I was hoping to work on photos, my nascent shop and other projects too but bed beckons. Maybe tomorrow.

The holidays have been busy until today but I have managed to get some drawing done. This may be in another post soon but you can see it on my Instagram if you are curious.

Anyway. One of the joys of growing the winter growing bulbs and other plants from parts of the world with a Mediterranean climate is that even in the depths of winter there are flowers in the greenhouse. All those below were in flower on Christmas day.