Holding on a While Longer

It seems that each Christmas, I get at least one poinsettia with the intention of keeping it alive throughout the year. I have yet to be successful. This year, however, on the day when all the other Christmas trim has gone back into storage, my poinsettia is thriving. (My Christmas cactus, well, that's another story.) I could take a picture of my plant, but instead, I am casting back to Halloween, when I snapped this picture of a colossal bush taken outside of Cholula, Puebla, Mexico. Living in Chicago as I do, I marveled at it growing outside, given that all my experience with it is as delicate hothouse flower. 

  

It may have been my favorite day in what was an incredible week. After dining--literally--roadside at a family-run stand (and eating Mamelas Banderas so delicious, I still crave them), we drove out toward a plot of land owned by Community Links International, which is associated with Frog Tree Yarns. They are building a casa and a permaculture food forest as a model for future projects. As we drove along, the volcano obliged us by sending up puffs of steam and ash just as we were passing through the decorated gate of the town.

We spent the early afternoon wandering the local cemetery, which was being readied for the Dia de Los Muertos, and then knitting in the casa, enjoying the volcano's show, and listening to the pops of the chapulines (grasshoppers) as they pounced from corn stalk to cornstalk. 

Remembering that warm, wonderful day is one way I have of facing the next two or three months of the icy, cold, wet, and gray that stretches out before me. My own bottle tree in my backyard may be covered with snow (though not quite so much, as this photo is from last winter)...

...I can think of the light shining through the bottles in the casa wall and dream of the sun.