T ' Was The Morning After Big Freeze !!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I love plants and at Christmas I usually make a point of having 4 or 5 poinsettias , a couple of flowering Christmas cacti and also a Norfolk pine .... all enhancing the house during the festive season. One brisk sunny day ( maybe 35 F ) shortly after moving here in early November Fluff and I drove by America's giant retailer and noticed they had received their Yuletide shipment of Norfolk pine ...... roughly 80 3 - foot high plants ....... all well - shaped and beaming with evergreen colour and good health !! That night the thermometer dipped to a hair below freezing so the following morning we headed out to W - M 's to check out the fate of the Norfolk pines.... and even buy one since they were selling for only $ 14.00 whereas elsewheres they were going for $ 25.00 and more.  

As we pulled into the W - M lot that morning I was hoping that some "associate genius "had thought about the overnight frost and had either brought them inide .... or had  , at least , covered the plants over. But no !!! They were still outdoors and all frost - bitten and browning ... the early stage of slow death. I started searching through the mess and finally came upon one that had toppled over and had been protected from Mother Nature's wintry touch by those standing over it. Fluff went in and paid for it and it now stands proudly in our new apartment .... the only one of that batch to survive that first heavy frost.The picture on right was taken some two weeks later and they are even browner and "deader "...... and nobody is buying them. 

The Norfolk pine is native to Norfolk Island in the Pacific Southwest.... and is , therefore , a tropical plant and should be treated as such The top pic is of the Norfolk Island flag...... with the pine highlighted  at its centre.