And six years later, we have a bloom!

When Kyle was in 3rd grade, he had Mrs. Lenahan for science. They were studying seeds and plants, and she had the seed of an amaryllis that she told the class was very, very beautiful but only bloomed after five years and then died. You have to harvest the seeds and plant them for the next go around.

Kyle brought me a tiny, flat seed in a baggie one day with a big smile on his face and the explanation that he knew how much I loved flowers and that this would be the most beautiful flower I'd ever seen. All I had to do was plant it and wait. Mrs. Lenahan told him that he would probably be in 8th grade when it finally bloomed.

I was dubious, but I didn't want to disappoint him. I put the seed in a pot, and it has remained there for 6 years. It would shoot up a couple of leaves every so often that would grow about 18 inches high, yellow, and die. A month or two later, new leaves would push their way out of the dirt and grow, yellow, and die. More than a few times, I was on the verge of throwing the whole thing out, but since it hadn't been five years, I waited.

Good thing I did.

After almost 3 months of nothing, the leaves began to grow again. They yellowed and died as usual, but then, a different sort of shoot began to pop up out of the dirt. Lo and behold, it was a flower stalk and there was a bud on it waiting to bloom! We watched the stalk get as tall as the middle of my kitchen window. It seemed to grow inches overnight. This morning, after six years, the little seed that the teacher gave Kyle when he was 9 years old opened its flower at my kitchen window. It is an electric shade of pink, hard to photograph because the photo looks so enhanced. I promise, the flower on this page is exactly this shade.

Kyle was right. It's one of the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen, made even more beautiful by the wait.