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Christmas Cheer?

What a Christmas!
Next year it  definitely is Christmas away. We have been under seige from
gales of up to 100 miles per hour for the past 24 hours. We have been
without electricity since yesterday afternoon until an hour ago (5.00 p.m.)
and amidst the candles and stoical attempts to rescue the Christmas spirit
through ....board games?!!  we find that we have no water; the local pumping
station has been hit by the storms.
A very big Cupressus macrocarpa in our orchard is no more, snapped in two
and flown into the farm yard next door.
My beautiful, elegant, Pyrus salicifolia has lost it's top half ( will the
bottom bit send forth new shoots and re-establish itself I wonder?) My
greenhouse is gone -  all over the garden ; searching for and  picking up
all the glass should be a joy. And we have come off relatively unscathed
compared to other parts of the country.
However, it's an ill wind etc. as they say, we haven't had to watch Charlie
and the Chocolate Factory and I have had the time (having nothing else to do
besides keep the home fires burning) to look through my lovely new Phillips
and Rix book, hot off the press - "Conservatory and Indoor Plants . Vol. 2."

For the likes us Wannabee Medit Planters in the frozen north, this book is
'fire in the loins' For the likes of you people for whom Yucca Whipplei is a
weed - well, bad cess to you!  Our Lord's Candle - Huh. Live dangerously I
say.
I'm  off to replace the swathe of fleece on the Echium pininana, if I can
find it (the Echium that is, last seen flying into the farm yard)
"It's a long way to Tipperary, it's a long way..............all together
now....."

Happy Christmas to all, 
Val Dennison,
Christmas Day,
Limerick,
Ireland.
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