Twelfth Night

Well the decorations have been taken down, the tree is cut up and waiting in the Green Bag to be collected with the garden waste and we're all back at work/uni/college. The house always looks both cleaner and barer once the decorations are removed and I'm never sure if I like it or not.

So I decided to buy these bright red tulips to give some colour. I always have mixed feelings about cut flowers; they look so wonderful indoors, but as soon as they are cut they start dying. Plus there's the whole ecological question of buying flowers from S Africa etc and the cost of transporting them. So on the rare occasion that I buy flowers I try to always get British ones.

These tulips are British; now I know that its been mild this year, but where in the UK is it warm enough to have tulips in flower? Surely even the Scillies won't be warm enough yet? Does that mean these flowers have been hot-housed? Oh, the guilt with even this small pleasure!