Poinsettia is in Bloom For The Winter Holidays

You see, the red bits are the leaves.  The actual flowers are the little things in the middle of the red leaves.  The nice thing about that is that if you don't kill your Poinsettia, the red leaves will stay on the plant into next year.

Surveying the yard and looking at my recent attempt of Landscaping, I spotted the pots and thought just in time for the Winter Holidays.   We used to have Poinsettia every year, but try as I like, it would never last long enough to make it through to the next year. 

New Jersey is not tropical.  No matter that they have Palm Trees growing indoors at every mall in the State, it seems, it just isn't tropical.

On the other hand, my back yard is much closer to the mark.  Even if where I have this particular pair of plants is under a Lanai that runs about 10 degrees or more hotter than out in the open, these two plants seem to like it there.

I'd put them in the ground but I think I'd get some static about that.   They're doing well, these pots are mess catchers.   If you irrigate orchids, the water will mostly pour through to the ground so why not add some more color by putting pots under them.   So all over the back yard, where there's an orchid, there's a pot under it getting overwatered.

Like that fabled person in San Juan, Costa Rica once said:  "It's the tropics, if it's a seed and you drop it on the ground, it's going to grow". 

That all makes it much easier for me to have too many plants all over my crowded back yard.

I have a neighbor on an adjoining property that likes papaya trees.  They have turned the back yard into a plantation.  If I can grow coleus, poinsettia, orange, lemon, and two varieties of hibiscus in pots, why not grow fruit trees densely packed in the yard?

If it were just a little closer I'd reach over and ... Yum!