poinsettia jungle

every year, our local church gives away the poinsettia plants that they used to decorate the altar for the holiday season. they tell the parishioners to take home the plants after the 12:15pm mass on the sunday celebrating the baptism of the lord, which was yesterday.

because my family had gone to an earlier mass, my sister and i decided to come back at the end of the final mass to take some plants home. i had wanted to take home pink (yes, pink! or rather, salmon-colored is more accurate) or the white poinsettias, but a lot of other people beat me to those colors. so i came out with red poinsettias, instead. these pots were heavy, but i was able to carry two small ones at a time, and came back inside for one more big one.

so now we have a little poinsettia jungle by our doorway. pretty soon, the colors will fade to green, like the other poinsettia plants we've adopted from the church from years past.

did you know that the poinsettia was named after joel roberts poinsett, the first U.S. ambassador to mexico? apparently, poinsettias are indigenous to mexico and guatemala, and the ambassador introduced the plant to the US in 1828.