My daughter brought over an Amaryllis bulb that she received as a Christmas gift from one of her students. It came with a pot and some rocks, but Katie doesn’t know that she has a green thumb yet, so she gave it to me. I planted the bulb in a pot right after Christmas and left it in a not so bright window, because that’s what the directions said to do. Every day, I checked the bulb, and it didn’t grow. It looked green on top and seemed as if the leaves were going to pop up and out at any time, but those leaves didn’t pop. I knew it was alive, but yet I wondered if maybe it got frozen before it made its way to our house. I seriously started to doubt the abilities of my green thumb. Luckily, one weekend when we had company, I moved the pot over to the living room and forgot about it.
The living room is where the most sunlight comes into our house. A few days later, I checked the bulb, and it looked like the leaves had grown a little, but I wasn’t sure. I checked again the next day, and sure enough, the bulb was growing, a very small amount at a time. After it took off, every day, it seemed like it grew at least an inch. Since I never had an Amaryllis bulb before, I didn’t know what to expect, but it looked like the buds were half of the plant. Soon the plant had grown to about four feet tall and the buds were quite large.
When I told people about the Amaryllis, they asked, “Isn’t that a Christmas plant?” I read and found out that a lot of people grow them to decorate their homes for Christmas, but by the time mine was received and figured out where the sun could reach it, it didn’t end up blooming until a few days after Valentine’s Day. I guess that’s what they call a “late bloomer.”
It’s not the bulb’s fault that it’s a late bloomer because it didn’t get to go into the dirt or didn’t get into the sun when it was supposed to. Sometimes things can be late by no fault of their own. Maybe late bloomers don’t get everything they need to bloom on time!
I was thankful we got to watch this plant grow and brighten up our wintry surroundings. 🙂
No one becomes a late bloomer doing something they hate. ~ J.M. Orend
My Reality Show 