Síle and my mother shared a passion for plants and a long time ago my mother gave Síle a cutting from her Christmas Cactus.

In the many years we lived over the restaurant on Mary Street it flowered dutifully every Christmas.
Then when we sold the restaurant (which my mother loved and would come and dine at the drop of a hat) and moved to Griffith Place, the Cactus refused adamantly to flower for the first four years and then, fitfully and with bad grace, after that.

This is the Cactus’s first Chjristmas in Languedoc and we were in some trepidation as to how she would behave.

As you can see above she likes it.
Phew !

She approves.

(As I know my mother would were she alive , and she would certainly have been a frequent , and welcome, visitor)