It was when the Creator was making all His ingenious arrangements for His new earth that His eye fell on something that one of His beautiful mammals had dropped on the ground. ‘That doesn’t look very nice,’ He said to Himself. ‘Couldn’t I do something clever with that?’
Only the day before He had solved one problem that was worrying Him. The earth, or parts of it, looked rather monotonous month after month, all leafy, but a bit samey.
Then a new word had popped into His mind, as words do. ‘Deciduous,’ He pronounced it. ‘I’ll make half these plants deciduous. Then all these leaves can turn jolly colours and drop off, and we can have a lovely fresh start in spring.’ It meant, of course, a bare patch in between while the new lot of leaves and flowers were getting ready. Mightn’t people feel a bit depressed, with cold weather, not much light and everything bare?
This was when He noticed the mammal’s contribution. ‘There’s a challenge,’ He said. ‘Let’s see if I can turn that into something to cheer everybody up.’ So He made it sprout lots of whimsical little pink flowers and painted its leaves with pretty silvery lines. And ever since, when deciduous plants go bare, the cyclamen puts on its show and everybody smiles.
