Too smug, too soon

This year, I've heard lots of women in my walking group talk with amazement about how their geraniums are still flowering - in January!

I can confirm this. My five geraniums are also blooming and putting out new flowers and leaves.

Normally, I put some branches from Christmas trees along the back of the window boxes, between the box and the balcony railing, to protect them from the cold and up to now, the flowers have survived the autumn, December and the start of January, but in the middle of that month, there is usually a frost, a bit of snow and they poor things go black and start to rot.

How smug I felt when, last week, in the second half of February, I removed some of the branches as we'd not had any frost, any snow, any temperatures below zero and my plants were merrily flowering just as much as they do in the summer. I genuinely thought that the worst of the winter was over. In fact, there have been a couple of days with a scent of spring in the air.

Imagine my surprise when I looked out of the french windows in the bedroom this morning and noticed something white on the lawn next door. Surely not?!

Yes, it was snowing. I had to rush out on the balcony and put the branches that I had merely dropped onto the balcony floor (I'm not that tidy) back into the window boxes to shroud the poor plants.

As they say, pride comes before a fall and I hope my pride in getting my geraniums through the winter and the worst month of the year (January) won't mean the demise of my pretty plants. Poor wee things.