Out Of Sight Out Of Mind

Mick's auntie and uncle bought me an amaryllis for Christmas, it was one of those already planted up and packaged in a box so that the recipient can just take it out, water it and it springs into life. Well, that's the theory anyway. Unfortunately, the gift got moved before I did anything with it and though I didn't exactly forget about it, I kept putting off starting it off.

When I did decide to give the poor thing a drink of water and coax it into action, I found that it had got sick of waiting for me to get my act together and it had already started growing. Now the box that it was packaged in was quite a strong box and was clamped firmly shut but this wasn't going to prevent this bulb from growing, oh no. I think I opened the box in the nick of time because when I did eventually open it up I found that the amaryllis had put out quite a shoot, though there was no room inside the box for it to grow straight so instead it was growing horizontally.

I never thought for a moment that it would right itself, the stem was a sickly pale colour and there didn't look to be any way that it could start growing upwards after this poor start, but it did. It hasn't grown to quite the height it would have had it been given the care it needed in the beginning, but it certainly hasn't done bad, it's about a foot tall.

It's a gorgeous colour. I can't remember growing a two tone amaryllis before, though I might have done, my memory isn't what it used to be. There's two other buds round the other side so I should get more flowers.

I'm making sure that I'm vigilant with my watering regime now, I can't let this poor thing suffer any more than it already has.