Yesterday I said that I have no idea how to overwinter amaryllis bulbs, but this is only partly true. I know what you’re supposed to do, I just don’t have a very good track record at it.
Back at the start of the pandemic, when everyone was hoarding yeast and stockpiling seeds, I decided to try again. I let the greens die back and put the pots in a dark corner of the basement.
Where they sat, forgotten, until more than a year later when my beloved came up from the basement holding three sad pots of crinkled empty nothingness.
“Can I please throw these outside?” she asked.
I surrendered to the inevitable, and out they went.
Fast-forward to summer. We were in the middle of a heatwave. I was standing at the kitchen window when I spotted something bright red sticking out of our brush pile in the woods. Was it a cardinal? No, it looked more like a flower. But I hadn’t planted anything over there. Unless…
Yes. Those dead bulbs had miraculously come back to life and were in full bloom. On the brush pile, in the woods.
In its less metaphorical sense, I have always preferred planting bulbs to seeds. We talk a lot metaphorically about the seeds of an idea. Are the long-running interests of one's life bulbs?