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.
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