My amaryllis bloomed!!!

Last year (2006) my son gave me an amaryllis plant for Christmas. It blossomed two beautiful flowers and that was it. I continued to let it grow stems through the summer and finally read up on how to try to "force" it to re-bloom this year.

I did everything that I was supposed to do. Cut it back, put it in the garage in the dark, left it there for I forget now how many weeks, etc. Brought it back out so that, according to what I had read, it would bloom again for Christmas. Well, Christmas came and Christmas went, and NOTHING. Finally about 2-3 weeks ago, I got stems. A little over a week ago, I noticed that one of the stems had what looked like a bud on the end. And, three days ago- VOILA!!!

Now, for those with green thumbs, this is no big deal. But for me, who has killed more plants than a bulldozer setting up for a new housing development, this is a MAJOR event! I can keep things like ferns alive, sometimes, but blooming plants? Almost never.

The really exciting part is that not only did it bloom, but if you look closely, you can see that ANOTHER bud has shown up. There will be MORE flowers soon.

So, while this is probably ho-hum for most of the world, for me this is a banner week in plant-growing.