Christmas Flowering

An old kitchen dresser stood against a wall in the shed. Its drawers were full of things that kept a small boy occupied for hours. Retired kitchen gadgets, tools, balls of string and a treasure trove of discarded odds and ends hoarded just in case something there might “come in handy one day”. There was a drawer off limits for little hands, my grandmother's place for keeping dahlia tubers safe and dry for their winter sleep. Brown paper bags held the sacred cache. Come spring they were taken from their dark, musty crypt for their yearly rebirth. Planted in a square of garden overlooked by the dining room window, the tubers would begin to stir in the warming sun. By Christmas day, the first bright blooms would blaze extravagant color that could be seen from the table as we tucked into lunch crowned in our paper hats. To a child, it seemed like magic, just pure magic. Note. Christmas in Australia is, of course, in summer.