I know very little - make that nothing - about house plants but have always accumulated them and they always grow. Mostly more than I want them to. This morning I've had to spend a couple of hours juggling the current cast of characters around into new pots. A lemon-scented geranium, unfondly known as 'droopy drawers' for its tendency to wilt if not watered almost daily, was only a tiny cutting at the beginning of the summer and grown purely for culinery purposes - a couple of leaves at the bottom of a madeira cake make it smell and taste wonderful and cook into a pretty impression of themselves so the bottom can become the top. I really didn't need the burgeoning abundance that is now three feet high and a couple of feet wide. A spider plant, once the tiny off-spring of an older plant, now is much too big for it's situation and has grandchildren. This I don't understand. I gave another baby spider to my daughter at the same time, hers is still a reasonable size and hasn't reproduced. The plants in her house seem to know their place. I evidently lack discipline in this area as in all things.

My mother liked flower arranging, preferably dried flowers which don't wither, fall, die. The joke was always that anything or anyone coming into our house, if it stood still long enough, would soon have a tasteful arrangement coming out of one or two orifices.