Rainy Day Lycoris

It wasn’t actually raining when I took photos of these Lycoris radiata, aka: red spider lilies, a few days ago but this morning we’re receving a good, soaking rain. It actually poured heavily for an hour yesterday afternoon which helped in raising the water levels of the community pond we’re on. Not only that, I’m sure the trees and vegetation are happy with a lovely dose of rainwater, someting we’ve had a meager amount of these last few months.

We were in Beaumont last year at a nursery just outside of town when we found a box of these bulbs sitting off on the side of the storeroom of the nursery. Curious on what they were, we asked the guys running the store what they were and how much they were. They informed us that a woman had brought them in after her husband had died thinking the nursery might want to use them or sell them. I can’t remember how many bulbs there were, maybe thirty, and they basically told us we could make an offer and they would sell the lot of them to us. I believe we offered $15 which is a bargain for these bulbs.

After we came home with the bulbs we planted them around an oak tree that was later directly adjacent to the vegetable garden. Knowing they came up in early autumn, we’ve been waiting for them to sprout. It was only after a good rain a few weeks ago that a few began to send up the flower stalk and bloom. Definitely not all of them awoke from their slumber, probably because we didn’t put enough compost down around the tree and keep the grass from around the tree, but maybe if we take better care of them this coming year they will do better for us next autumn.