winter flowers

Now that it's cold and snowy and dark outside, I am cheered by the amazing flowers that are blooming in the house.

The Christmas cactus is dormant all summer, and bursts into bloom when the days are at their shortest.  It will go on to bloom about four times during the dull days of winter before it goes back to sleep in Spring.

I have never seen the flowers produced by a Wandering Jew until this year.  Yellow tassels are replaced by white fluff that doesn't get a chance to blow away in a windless house.

My red oxalis looks like a perfect shamrock.  And the purple nodding trumpets look great all summer blooming outside, and continue blooming in the house, if they get enough light.

"Lemon tree very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet....."  I am definitely letting you know my age when I say I remember that old song by Trini Lopez from the '60s.  But the lemon flower does smell amazingly sweet, and my small tree is full of them.

This spider plant baby will soon be putting out a white flower.

The amaryllis, just popping a shoot out of the bulb at the moment, promises a thick stalk with three to four big trumpet-shaped pink flowers.