Two Gardeners Preparing for Christmas!
Season 6, Episode 6, December 20, 2023
Well, a warm welcome to today’s podcast episode and a Merry Christmas to everyone. And to those who celebrate other holidays this time of year, we wish you all the best as well!
On this week’s episode, we talked mostly about holiday preparations, which of course includes adding just the right plants. Dee and I both have lots of amaryllis getting ready to bloom. Mine arrived via jumping amaryllis planters at Costco. If you get your cart a little too close to those big racks they have up front that are loaded with holiday plants…
Listen to find out what might happen! Dee, on the other hand, ordered her amaryllis bulbs and potted them up.
Neither way is right or wrong, as long as the result is blooming flowers indoors in the wintertime, which we all need.
Something no one needed but was fun for me to do was put my snowdrop bloom in a variety of backgrounds supplied by the magic of Instagram. I did as Dee suggested and made a snowdrop reel on Instagram that you might enjoy.
For more useful information on another Christmas plant, paperwhites, check out Dee's blog post on paperwhites that don't stink.
This whole flower segment was inspired by Dee’s last article for Oklahoma Living, Christmas plants other than poinsettias. That’s right, she’s handed in her writing trowel after writing for them for many years.
Speaking of poinsettias, I noted that one of my lost ladies of garden writing, Daisy Thomson Abbott, had some advice about growing poinsettias after the holidays, and I’m tempted to buy a poinsettia just to try out her method.
I also answered someone’s question about why their Christmas cactus wasn’t blooming by recommending they watch the first five to ten minutes of The Homecoming: A Christmas Story and do what Mrs. Walton did to get hers to bloom.
For our vegetable topic, Dee gave me advice on veggies to serve on a veggie platter on Christmas Day. I probably won’t take very many of her suggestions.
On the bookshelf, perfect for the season, we reviewed Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Baillie Tolkien (Amazon link). We both love it and recommend purchasing via the bookshop.org link to get the better edition of the book.
For our dirt, we revisited mistletoe, asking, “Is Mistletoe Friend or Foe?” I wrote an article last year for Family Handyman about whether or not you should try to grow mistletoe from seed. You know the answer, right?
Here’s a video clip to show you the rest of our dirt topic - Christmas mugs!
Down in the rabbit holes, Dee talked about socks and other products from Insect Shield and the Two Alpha Gals podcast episode. I bought myself some Insect Shield socks for mowing.
My rabbit hole was Mildred V. Luedy, co-author of The Christmas Rose, 1948.
And that’s a wrap for this year, as they say. Dee and I wish all of you a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year. Our next episode will be coming to you in 2024!
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For more info on Carol, visit her website or blog, May Dreams Gardens.
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(Long story)
I love mistletoe because of what it means to me. Sixty years ago my dad took our family out into the Oklahoma countryside to gather pecans off a property that a friend owned. Us kids got busy and had a trunk full of pecans in the back of the family sedan. So we leave and driving further down the road my older sister sees a big clump of mistletoe and says we have to stop and pick it. She and my brother jump out of the car, get the mistletoe, get back, and my dad starts to drive off. Just then a man comes barreling down the road in a pickup and wants to know what we are doing on his property which just happens to be full of pecan trees. My dad explains that the kids just wanted some mistletoe, we weren’t doing anything else. We all held our breath because if he had demanded dad open the trunk it would have been hard to explain away a trunk over flowing with pecans.
Another reason is when I lived away from home (Oklahoma) it was a reminder of family. Yes, it’s a parasite but I don’t care.
Merry Christmas and all the best in the new year.