Naturally disappointing. Wednesday 29th April - Australia - 6746 cases 990 Active - 265 per million population

My parents had a pot plant in their little bush house that had spotted leaves and always looked as though the old bloke had been painting and had forgotten to cover it beforehand.  Somewhere along the line I came to be its custodian, which if you are a potted plant, given our usually peripatetic lifestyle is not necessarily a sign that you will live long and prosper.  My usual solution to this dilemma is to rid the poor thing of its pot, stick it in the ground to fend for itself and more or less forgot about it.

This works to varying degrees it must be said, but the little Spotted Dracena (Dracaena surculosa if you insist) was nothing if not a survivor, and has sat there presumably happily for a few years, not doing too much at all until a month or two ago, when it produced an entirely new stem.  This was followed this week by a cluster of flower buds on another stem.  Yesterday evening one of them emerged and I grabbed my camera to have a practice for the spectacle that would come today when another dozen or so would join their solitary mate.

"Disappointment" does not describe the feeling one has when one rises on the morrow morn excited and intent on photographing nature in all its wonder, to find that some other miscreant part of that natural wonder had risen earlier and chomped off the head of every bud.

Yesterday's photo will therefore have to suffice.  However, if you squint at it, and poke yourself in the eye ten or twelve times with a pencil, you may see enough duplicates of the solitary flower to gain a fair impression of how the thing in full bloom may have appeared, and at the same time, will feel some of my pain.