Root-Bound Amaryllis

I've had a steady stream of amaryllis blooming for the past month, often 2 or 3 at a time. I thought i had 3 amaryllis plants, but i seem to have about 8. I'm not sure where they all came from. Well, 2 of them came from a plant sale at a library, but beyond that, i don't know. I feel so delighted to have actual blooming amaryllis.

For years, i tried all sorts of tricks to get my amaryllis to bloom. I did what the garden books said: cut off the foliage in October and don't water them until December. I tried planting them outdoors for the summer.

Meanwhile, my neighbor who did absolutely nothing, other than water his amaryllis every week, had reliable blooms, year after year.

I finally decided to plant the bulbs in small pots, let them get root-bound, and Voila! Flowers! Usually 2 stalks on each plant.

When we practice concentration meditation, we narrow our focus on one spot. By binding our attention to a single point, such as the breath, the mind blooms into joy and even bliss.

My amaryllis bulbs are multiplying, so i'm dividing them, and putting each one in a small pot.

Root-Bound

I just noticed that one pot of amaryllis has 4 good-sized bulbs in it, so i transplanted them, each into its own individual pot.

When i turned the pot upside down, out fell another, smaller pot. The 4 bulbs bulged out of the small pot like a middle-aged woman trying to fit into a dress she wore as a teenager. The bulbs bulged so strongly that i could not shake them out, pull them out, nor push them out. A table knife eventually solved the problem as i cut around the edge as i would do for a cake stuck to a cake pan.

We can get so comfortable with our bad habits that we don't realize they don't fit any more. The cute sullenness of a teenager doesn't look that good on a middle-aged woman. Teenage lingo and speech mannerisms don't fit a young professional woman if she is serious about her career.

The first step in breaking a bad habit is simply to be mindful of it. Listen to it. Look at it. Feel it in your body. You don't have to change a thing. Simply by being mindful, change will happen on its own.

Photo from forums.gardenweb.com

Amaryllis

My amaryllis is blooming! This success comes after years of hit-and-miss results--mostly failures--with getting amaryllis to re-bloom.

OK. You buy an amaryllis. You plant it. It blooms. Then what?
You hide those wide green strappy leaves somewhere behind another plant. Then i take the amaryllis (and all my houseplants) outdoors for the summer.

I have tried:
1) leaving them in their pots, cutting back the foliage in September, taking the bulbs out of the pots, storing them in the basement, and replanting the bulbs in pots in November.

2) same as (1) except leaving the bulbs in their pots.

3) taking the bulbs out of their pots in May, planting the bulbs in the garden, digging them up in September, and letting them rest until November when i re-pot them.

4) same as (3) except repotting them in September.

My neighbor Cliff leaves his potted amaryllis on the window sill 365 days a year. He never cuts the foliage back. He waters it just like he waters all his other plants. The amaryllis reblooms every December. So i decided to proceed on the theory that amaryllis re-bloom when they become root-bound.

I bought 2 potted amaryllis at a plant sale at the library a year and a half ago. Last spring one of them bloomed, and now the other one is blooming. Success! I feel ecstatic.

Sometimes we really have to hunt for a solution in our meditation to find a meditation object that interests us enough to keep us alert and that will also lead us to tranquility.

Does watching the breath work for you?
If not, try hearing meditation.
If that doesn't particularly work, try watching sensations of the body.
If that doesn't work, try loving-kindness meditation.

You get the idea. My book, The Meditative Gardener, offers more than 100 guided meditations, contemplations, and investigations. Surely, you can find something in there that interests the mind sufficiently so that it settles down for a few minutes.

And then joy arises when our meditation blooms :)