Ah my dearest Clivia

 Ah my dearest Clivia - how I have wronged thee.

I remember so well that day when we first met, way back in February 2016.  I bought you from a plant sale at Little Ponton.  I had wanted one of you for a few years and the opportunity to buy a bargain plant was not going to be missed.  You came home with me, I loved you, I looked after you.  I let you Summer outdoors and Winter indoors.
and then my dearest Clivia, I made a mistake.  I decided to place you outside in the Courtyard Garden for the Summer as usual and I repotted you into a large ceramic pot.  I have not got a photo that shows this, which indicates I think I knew this was not my brightest idea.

Why so? dear reader I hear you ask.  Well, it was a large ceramic pot.  It was a heavy ceramic pot.  It was heavy before the compost went in and just not movable once the plant was planted within it.  I realised this pretty swiftly but decided I would repot the Clivia into something lighter in the Autumn and move it back indoors as usual.  I had a plan and I like a plan.

The plan went wrong.

Some of you may recall that when on the way back from a walk to Kirby Muxloe Castle last year on Hallowe'en I broke my ankle.  This made life challenging for a few weeks and in relation to the Clivia and several other tender plants, it was a death knell.  I could not get them indoors for the Winter as I could not lift anything heavy until my ankle was fully healed.  I looked at them through the conservatory window and apologised time and time again as I watched them freeze and die.

In the Spring I furtled about in the pot to see if it was dead, and whilst it was quite rotted the roots did not seem totally lost.  I kept it watered and fed and hoped.

Nothing happened.

In late summer I decided to stop walking around this large pot of unhappiness and compost the Clivia.  I dug it out of the pot and.....

there was a sign of life, a little leaflet forming and heading for the sunlight.

I trimmed the roots to remove all the dead.  I repotted it into a smaller pot and popped it into the greenhouse to give it some extra warmth and.....
she lives!  The Clivia is now the conservatory to overwinter and recover but I have great hopes that one 
day she will flower again.  Sadly several others of the tenders  were not so lucky.  (sorry Ensete ventricosum and brugmansia.....)

Stay safe and be kind.

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Comments

  1. What a wonderful discovery that just have been!

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  2. Oh that's a spark of hope out of that sad tragedy - I have a soft spot for clivias as there has always been one in the family home although I managed to kill off my own as I tend to neglect any indoor plants. I am now remedying that by growing them in the Coop (my lean-to greenhouse), one grown from seed but not yet flowering, and some teeny tinies about the size of your phoenix from the ashes one. We need patience!

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