We've got poinsettias in our window. Our landlord brought them home from a Christmas party in December and drunkenly handed them off to us on the stairs, clearly glad to be rid of them. Of course by now the red leaves are very nearly gone - just five remain on one plant, none on the other. But both have out out a significant collection of green leaves.
Do you know how poinsettias get to be red? It's to do with being shut away in the dark. Poinsettias require at least 12 hours of darkness 5 days in a row to turn their leaves red - but lots of sunlight in the remaining 12 hours to make the color vibrant.
I don't know why I have to attach an emotion to a biological reality, but the idea of forcing poinsettias to turn red seems sad to me. My aunt and uncle ran a greenhouse for years, and of course poinsettias were big business. At some point all of them had to be forced into red growth by shutting them away in the dark for appropriate lengths of time.
Why should this feel sad? I don't know. But I look at the green growth and wonder, would I shut these plants away on a time schedule just to make them red again?
Yes, I know. Not everything is a metaphor. It just feels that way sometimes.
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