Pelargonium ardens

A very wet stormy day greeted us when the curtains were drawn early this morning.  I immediately knew I would offer to drive Helena to work as she still isn't fully fit and a soaking on the way to work wouldn't be pleasant.  So having made  a strong coffee for both of us we set off at 8-10am to the far side of town.

I'd noticed that my email inbox was filling up before I left, and I decided to get the urgent ones out of the way as soon as possible.  That took a flurry of to and fro adjustments to a document and then I was relatively free, as I'd been looking forward to some time for myself for some days.   

I found that a new macro challenge was beginning today so this afternoon I returned to the cabin with my favourite Pelargonium Ardens which some of you may have seen blipped in years passed.  I bought it as a tiny plant about ten years ago and have managed to propagate new plants from it on odd occasions.  This particular plant is a few years old but has been flowering already this spring for two months, which is why I wanted to photograph it before the flowers finished for the season.

It isn't a common plant and was sold to me as difficult to cultivate, but I've found it seems to love the life I offer it.  I have never fed it either.  I love the tiny red and black coloured flowers with their even tinier pink stamens which you might just be able to see.  The flowers are probably only about 1 cm to 1.5 cm in diameter which shows you the scale of the whole flower which is probably 7 cms across and on the end of a long stem which grow in sections out from the main stem of the plant.  

It seems that the greenfly love this plant at the moment, as I've already cleared quite a few of them from the hairy stems in the last few days.  I hadn't noticed that there are several in this shot looking for a good place to suck sap from.  Can you spot them?