Devious Pete and The Great Leaf Robbery

Agatha Christie, eat your heart out...

Sunrise does not come early at this time of year and being shielded by mountains to the east, it arrives even later in Alfacar. Even so, those welcome morning rays flooded in through my bedroom window just before the church bell struck nine o'clock today, a welcome sign that Spring is preparing to stir all those tightly wrapped buds and dormant shoots into action.

Realistically speaking, the first clear signs that the season is turning don't appear until later in the month when the almonds begin to blossom. That is a marvellous sight which I'm sure I'll be sharing with you when it happens. But the high levels of winter sunshine here do mean that it is possible to keep some outside windowsill plants in flower all year round. The mainstay are the Pelargoniums which - if they don't succumb to the dreaded alien geranium butterfly which has become such a nuisance here - can happily survive and flower in sub-zero temperatures as long as they get plenty of sun.

Cyclamen, both big and small, are equally resilient and keep showing off their colours all through the colder months, whether they are in pots or troughs or planted out in gardens. But it is another winter bloomer that captured my heart shortly after I came to live in Spain and has become a permanent fixture with me, not to mention a source of great cheer when life is at its lowest post-festive ebb. For gardeners and especially for bulb fanatics, it is one of those "must have" plants. In fact, this flower was to be responsible for my temporary but shameful descent into the murky world of criminal activity!

Lachenalia bulbifera.

This is Lachenalia bulbifera, one of the Cape Hyacinths from South Africa. As the name suggests, it is distantly related to the hyacinths and bluebells but the plants in this relatively small genus produce flowers in an astonishing variety of colours and forms from golden yellow to an almost surreal turquoise. And of course, our flaming beauty with its masses of waxy tubular flowers tipped with green and blue and a dash of yellow pollen. As soon as I saw this lovely plant, flowering in profusion on windowsills and in patio pots all around the town, I knew that I had to have some too.

But how to achieve this? I had never seen them for sale in shops or garden centres, so I was going to have to resort to more drastic measures.

Yes, I am afraid that I resorted to a little petty thievery! This is not quite so despicable as it sounds, as I had previously read that it was possible to reproduce this plant from leaf cuttings, a rather unusual method of propagation for a bulb. So, one dark and drizzly evening, hooded to conceal his identity, Devious Pete the infamous leaf thief set out to pilfer said greenery, armed with a plastic bag marked "Loot" and a whole load of audacity.

Never fear, oh law abiding citizens - I was very discrete and only removed a few leaves which on my return home, were duly potted up with nobody the wiser about my brief sorty into the criminal underworld. And sure enough, when they died down later that year, I emptied the pot to discover a host of fat little white bulbs. These were planted up again in the Autumn and the following January, they flowered for the first time.

Now, five years on, I have eight pots filled with these gorgeous brilliant red beauties. They multiply each season and bloom for weeks on end, happily surviving the cold as long as they are in a bright and sheltered position - indeed, they actively dislike high temperatures and will repay you for such well intentioned pampering by wasting away.  

So, who says that crime doesn't pay..!

(PS: In stereotypical Cockney accent: I am now a completely reformed character - erm, yeah, honestly...).