mulberryshoots

When I rearranged and cleaned up the shelf of orchids a couple of weeks ago, I culled out four pots of amaryllis, the soil dry and the flower blooms long gone by. After C.’s visit, I carried them out to the back deck so that the leaves would be watered by the rain, cut back at the end of summer, allowed to dry in the cellar and then brought up to the window shelf to flower again during the winter months. That’s the cycle for reinvigorating and nourishing these plants to bloom year after year. It is always astonishing when they come back and bloom, sometimes two stalks of four flowers each. That’s why growing amaryllis bulbs that originate from South Africa is so rewarding. These were forgotten and left untended in the front entryway over Christmas. But their blooms were so gorgeous in the dead of winter after the holidays.

We had a lot of rain recently as I noted in the last post. Yesterday, I went out with a pair of shears to trim off the unsightly yellowish brown leaves and to tidy the pots up. As I snipped the dried brown bits, I came upon this incredible late bloomer! Isn’t rain great?