A check for buds in a pot of amaryllis bulbs revealed a happy extra recently. Mother and I had unearthed the amaryllis bulbs about this time a year ago in preparation for her move to a retirement community in Hattiesburg, MS. I had plunked the bulbs and the soil surrounding them into pots and carted them 90 miles to my home with other things Mother couldn’t take with her but wanted available.
That was all the care they received in the rush of preparing her house for an unexpectedly quick sale. Even with no attention, they bloomed that spring. Evidently I also moved some hidden parts of her sweet william plants with the amaryllis bulbs, and they waited until now to make their debut. The blooms are rioting in the amaryllis pot.
Mother confirmed by phone that the lavender blooms were indeed sweet william. “I started them from plants from a friend at Elks Lake,” Mother recalled about the flower’s introduction to her beds along the front of her house years ago. “Our Sunday School class had a class meeting at her house, and sweet william plants were all around her yard. Sweet william takes over in the spring, and then it dies down. It’s like a weed; you can’t get rid of it.”
She said both she and my father liked the perennial. “We never did try to get rid of it.”
I hope the sweet william now blooming beside the amaryllis buds feels at home in its new location. For me, pass-along plants are living reminders of special people who have shared their lives and their love of growing things.
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