The wonderful thing about a garden is that you never really know what will grow and when. We can pretend that we know that if we plant a lettuce seed and follow the directions that it will sprout within a week. But sometimes that doesn’t happen for a variety reasons (poor soil, old seed, not enough water, too much water, too cold, too hot, etc.) There are, however, things that happen in the garden that are truly wonderful and unexpected.
One of my favorite flowers is hippeastrum, which is often sold as amaryllis. This American bulb is a favorite of many and you are hard pressed to walk into any supermarket, Home Depot, drug store after November 1 and not find a stand of them. My mother-in-law used to have a swath of them in her garden in Guatemala City, more like exotic weeds than a just another foundation planting.
But we Northerners can’t have such guilty pleasures as the climate and soil conspire against such displays. We buy the bulbs in the fall, pot them up hoping they will bloom around Christmas and then either keep them for another year or (the more common view) throw them out as many see it as an annual rather than a bulb to be cared for and loved.
I am of the former rather than the latter school though I admit I am batting around 50% in getting successive blooms from my bulbs. This past fall, like every year, I dropped into one of our local nurseries and bought a few new blubs, which are the size of large navel oranges. These bad boys are guaranteed to bloom. And they always do. Except this year.
This year one of my navel-orange-sized bulbs decided not to bloom. It sent up a few tiny leaves that abruptly stopped. There they were stunted like a “Mini Me” next to fully growing and blooming brethren. It was the runt of the litter.
As the months progressed it never got bigger, just staying its tiny self. Long after all the other spikes had long since grown and withered, it sat with its truncated leaves. So I just left it alone first in my greenhouse with all my other hippeastrum and then in the garden where they all sit on a shelf soaking up the rays.
A couple of weeks ago it started to grow. Quickly. And before I knew it bloomed. At the same time one of my many Christmas cacti decided to go into bloom. You can try to understand why this occurs. Perhaps the excessive rain, cool temperatures, cloudy skies are tricking them to bloom. But I don’t care. I like the mystery. Christmas in July.
