parti-colored

The Vol-in-Law isn't much of a one for buying flowers. He once found a fresh-ish bouquet of mums in the gutter of a windy Preston Road in North West London and gave those to me. He was very proud of himself for that - and to be fair he did change the water every day so it lasted a long time.

I do drag him to the garden centre several times a year, but he gets antsy like a little kid. He can only look at the garden statuary for so long.

But last year we saw a most beautiful, but over priced pot of fancy chrystanthemums last year. It was £10 - but the complex blooms were fluffy and butter yellow. We looked at it for some time before buying it. This is not the kind of purchase we usually make. I have never seen the Vol-in-Law willingly spend money on any kind of flowers and certainly not ten whole pounds. (With current sliding dollar values - almost 20 bucks).

It survived the winter, and I cut it back in Spring and dutifully pinched the growing tips over the Spring (with the last pinch on the Fourth of July as a garden centre co-worker Ty Justice advised me to do) - so there would be one set of fabulous blooms in the fall. But I'd never overwintered chrysanthemums before, and I didn't cut it back hard enough in the Spring - so the plant is all floppy and mis-shapen.

The blossoms are still that beautiful yellow - but they're droopy. And one or two of the blossoms have reverted to a purple color and one blossom is fully half-and-half.