Plants and plant pots

Yesterday we went to look at plant shops. They were all a bit sad-looking, really. We should have gone a month ago, I suppose. That's the best time for bedding plants in Cyprus, so as to get some colour over the winter.

Still, we managed to find a few at Cosmea, our favourite plant shop. In the big pottery planter (which is looking a little the worse for wear) I put three geraniums, and a couple of pansies:


Geraniums usually do very well in Cyprus; at our old house we had some geraniums which grew enormous. But so far the ones we've had in pots on the patio haven't lasted more than a few months. Perhaps they really need open soil to do well.

I also bought a few petunias for a plastic planter, and put them with an antirrhinum which has sprung into life, presumably from a seed of a plant that withered away about six months ago:


The main reason we went to the plant shop, however, was to buy a couple of larger plant pots. Two of the plants were bursting out of their pots. This one, which was doing really well when I wrote this update on plants in August, had actually broken its pottery container. So we bought a large round plastic one instead, and it looks much happier:


Most of the plants are looking healthy, with one exception - the fig tree. We bought it in April, and in this plant update in May, it had already produced four or five tiny fruits. They grew almost to fig-sized, but remained rather hard so we didn't pick them; during our time away in September and October, they dropped off.

More worryingly, the fig leaves started to go brown, and several of them dropped off too. We wondered if the plant hadn't been watered sufficiently in our absence, but it wasn't THAT hot, and all the other plants looked fine.

Then a friend casually mentioned that fig trees are deciduous. Apparently we should expect the leaves to fall off! That had never occurred to us... good thing he mentioned it, or we might have given up on the plant when it turns into a bare stalk:


PS - December 1st already. Out of the 56 items that ended up on my list for the last two weeks, I did 29. I'll do a couple more today, too. At least that's half-way there. I also managed to post something every day of November on this blog, which means I am entitled to display this:


I shall attempt to keep it up, too, although I doubt if I'll quite manage every day in December.