Geranium

Today’s flower is a geranium! I keep geraniums from year to year, jokingly saying it’s the only thing my damp basement is good for. I used to try to coddle them with newspapers and peat moss or hanging upside down, but it’s come down to just carrying them inside and having them upstairs for a while, then pushing most of them into the dark corner of the basement as they don’t seem to want or need the extra care, they just want to sleep. After the new year they begin to sprout new leaves, even in the dark, and I take them out, water them, take cuttings to trim them back, and make more geraniums. Most of them survive this treatment, and I sell or give away the new plants made from the cuttings.

But they change color slightly each year. This lovely coral color developed from a group of mixed pink geraniums a friend gave me, evolving over about six years from a medium pink to this vibrant, warm color. Another shade of paler pink has grown so pale it’s difficult to tell there is any color, and another has darkened toward a magenta.

Normally geraniums can open nearly all the blossoms at once, but the heat has made some of the earlier florets wither before some of the buds have opened.