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7th Decade Thoughts

Thoughts about books, politics and history (personal and otherwise), pictures I've taken and pictures I've edited.

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

This is January—as you can see from the bare tree limbs above the house—and my bougainvillea is blooming its head off. Brighter fuchsia than usual. More blossoms than all summer. A dry winter does more for it than the special bougainvillea fertilizer I used that was supposed to make more blooms. The bougainvillea blooms best when its under stress—especially when it’s excessively dry. It looked spectacular the summer we had a drought and then in Phoenix a couple of years ago, I decided that was the ideal climate for it.

There’s a good story about this particular plant. When I first moved to Houston I was fascinated by all the tropical flowers so I bought a bougainvillea in a pot for the balcony of our apartment. When we bought a house, I planted it behind a big barn wood fence and put an old, gnarled log up against the fence for it to grow along. It flourished—evidently protected by the fence. Then in due course, the barn wood was eaten by bugs and collapsed. We built a new fence, but it started at the edge of the house, not at the sidewalk so the bougainvillea stood out by itself. Now it’s 15 feet tall or more and has to be trimmed every couple of week in the summer or else no one could come up with walk. Posted by Picasa

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