Brave New World

2026 has just begun and I'm already salivating with the anticipation of another spring and summer ahead.  I certainly felt that 2025 ended on a high note, prompted, perhaps, by this amaryllis, a Christmas gift from a friend, that began blooming the day after I received it and bloomed across both Christmas and New Year's Day.  It is just now beginning to fade into the background and I need to remove the "waxy rubber" coat from the bulb, pot it up, and see if I can coax it to bloom again next year.  It certainly bloomed itself onto center stage for the holidays, a bright spot indoors when the seasonal grays imposed.  Look upon it, all ye, and despair not!

Outside, in the garden, all is quiet and dormant.  I keep the bird feeders filled with sunflower and thistle in the hope of keeping SOME movement and life in the garden, all while I also keep the rat bait stations filled to diminish the pack rat population and quell the seeming overpopulation of the filthy creatures.  I have recently noticed some "tunneling" in my back bed, and I'm wondering if moles are making a first-ever incursion into my garden or if the pack rats are merely switching tactics.

Garden statues, and other garden "bones", stand out in winter.  Mine are even more gray this year because I recently observed that my beloved "reading angel", a long-ago birthday gift from my wife and daughter, was disintegrating.  She had toppled over in fall, and her wings were in pieces on the ground and her concrete weathered and worn out on exposed dorsal surfaces.   Another statue, a long-eared rabbit, had lost an ear and broken off a paw over time.  I repaired both as best I could with some concrete patch repair and then I spray-painted most of my plain concrete statues to protect them, with the resulting flat gray appearance you see here.   Once it warms up, if the paint seems to protect them from weather and freeze-thaw cracks, I'll spray other concrete statues and then keep them painted in rotation.  One must care for our bones!

At this time of year, any color other than brown and umber stands out in the garden, so I was delighted to find this Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' in fine leaf and full variegation despite the frigid temperatures we occasionally see.   I have transplanted this clump twice over the years, and it has cloned itself locally, but this cultivar doesn't seem to have near the self-seeding tendencies of my more common variegated Yucca varieties.  And therein lies my primary observation of this blog entry;  whenever you actually want a near-ideal plant to spread like a weed, they don't, but turn your back on any  common perennial and they'll soon be choking out your most prized plants!

Have a happy and productive 2026 gardening year, my friends!

Where've You Been, Baby?

In preparation for Christmas, as per my usual pattern, ProfessorRoush planted an Amaryllis bulb, 'Red Lion', about 2 weeks prior to Thanksgiving.  This year's selection was purchased as a dormant bulb at a local nursery, so one could say that I splurged compared to my usual purchase of the bulbs at Sam's Club or another big box store.  All according to my new resolution to support small nurseries.

In most years, that 6-weeks-prior-to-Christmas-potting results in some welcome bloom and bright colors just at Christmas, so imagine my surprise this year when the bulb just sat there.  And sat there.  It had a greenish skin color at the top, obviously still viable, but it sat there.  I kept it watered and in full sunlight and still it stubbornly stared at me, reluctantly unwilling to reciprocate with regal red flowers or, for that matter, even stems.  Christmas came and passed without a hint of growth from the bulb. 

Finally, sometime after the New Year, my prima donna bulb decided it was time to come out of dormancy and it teased me over for weeks with the slow development of a sturdy stem.  I added rotating the pot every other day to my chores since the stem kept slanting towards the light.  At three feet tall it decided to put out three buds, just in time to lull me into anticipation of bloom by Valentine's day.  Valentine's day came and went.   And then, on February 15th, it decided that since St Valentine's day was over it could finally come out of hiding to bless us with its presence.  Three large beautiful bright velvety blooms in three days.  On the 17th, as the third bloom opened, we left for Las Vegas.  When we returned on the 21st, all the blooms were sagging, their energy spent, their beauty gone.

I may never know what was so obviously amiss this year.  Perhaps the bulb was weak?  Perhaps the pot too small?  The water or light too slight?  At any rate, at least the birds got to enjoy it through the window; a red beacon of Spring, shining from the sunroom of an empty house for a few scant days.