Flowers

It was really gorgeous... but it is going green now. No idea if I ever get the thing peachy again, even if I play peek-a-boo with it in the basement or cloakroom.

?!!!? I read several instructions to stuff them into a pitchblack place in November for 16 hours every day and take them out to the window sil for a few hours in the middle of the day, and the room must have 100% no light, no ocassional electric one whilst fetching something else there or shining through under the door even, so if you do not have a chamber like this you must box it for those 16 hours.... anyway it's an ordeal for both the plant and the housewife and after it does not look pretty like one from the store afterwards. I tried several times already and endet up with only few green-blotchy coloured bracts , loss of the largest green leafs below and very long blossom steems, IOW a very miserable looking thing providing no cheer or decoration, in one year it got me even a comment on to much thriftiness by a particular honest relative, whilst I was so proud I put it through. :o(

Hmmm... thats nice and perhaps useful for others to know that with the darkness seems to be an urban legend.
Unfortunately, whilst I have overall a very bright condo with a lot of windows (7 tall panels with outside view in the livingroom going in all directions but north is a whole lot for people not having a freestanding individual house, many envy or at least admire the clever floorplan), but "sunny" in winter still means just indirect light as I am in the groundfloor in an area where all the appartment buildings got 4-5 levels above ground so in front of my south window is just one leg of my narrow L-shaped yard, a public dead-end drive and the western end of yet an other tall appartmenthouse. In november the sun stays behind this big building until just before it hits the trees of the Meisterhofer Forst. So I get splendid sunsets at times with filtered light through tall decidous naked trees, but no direct daytime sun hitting an inside window sil. Also our late autumns in the south of the Linzgau are famous for thick fog. Some days it is sunny in the whole greater area, according to the radio, only the lake and surrounding 3-4 kilometres of flat level shore sit in a cloud from the slowly cooling water masses that refuses to lift or break break up until the afternoon and this house is usually still inside the parameter. On this days I can barely see my own hedge and need lamps for almost every task. So, in all, bright late autumn sunrays in heated rooms is nothing I can provide.