December is the holiday month with Hannukah, Christmas, Kwanza and numerous other festive gift giving days. In my family, December is also the birthday month for four members. In these hard economic times, TheGardenLady likes to come up with creative but inexpensive gift ideas so as not to break the bank.
You can give IOUs to friends. Make or buy a pretty card- preferably with a flower on it – and offer your friend your services in the friend’s garden. For example, write on the card that you owe your friend one day of weeding time or if your friend is going somewhere, offer to water the flowers – indoors and/or outdoors when your friend is away. Or if your friend is away from the college campus while you will be around, offer to care for any plants.
Or one can propagate plants from your own plants. This is a little late in the year to get started for the plant to really be showy in time for Christmas and is really not the time to propagate outdoor plants; but one can attempt to propagate some simple indoor plants even at this late time of the year. The easiest way of propagating indoor plants is by taking leaf cuttings. Not all plants will propagate by leaf cuttings. Some simple, pretty plants amenable to this type of propagation are coleus, begonias and African violets. Sometimes all that is needed to get a root to form is to just put a stem with leaf cutting in water.
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