Bright balloons

I love a red geranium, me. 
This one was a very paltry specimen until I repotted it in the spring in some good quality compost. It's burgeoned and I can't stop marveling at its blood-burst magnificence.

I looked for a poem and it turns out that potted geraniums make quite a showing in the annals of literature. The one I like best is the The Pot Geranium by Norman Nicholson, a lesser-known poet of the Lake District (but known I'm sure to SpotsOfTime who may even have namechecked him.)
 He lived all his life in the small town of Millom and because he contracted TB during his adolescence  he spent several years cooped up in his bedroom with little distraction..
I won't quote the whole poem which is here and well worth reading, just these lines which epitomise the intensity of these flowers.

... there on a shelf
In the warm corner of my dormer window
A pot geranium flies its bright balloon,
Nor can the festering hot-house of the tropics
Breed a tenser crimson; for this crock of soil,
Six inch deep by four across,
Contains the pattern, the prod and pulse of life,
Complete as the Nile or the Niger.




The angular succulent in the centre of the image  grew from a tiny shoot given to me several years ago by blipper Serpentine who has very green fingers indeed. (Mother of Millions, an invasive weed in some parts of the world according to DonnaWanna's comment below.)