Glanced out the back door this morning and noticed that the rain lilies (zephyranthes) have send up two buds. They will prolly be open by the time I get home this afternoon, but I culdn't resist dashing out in the rain to snap a photo.
I first remember seeing zephyranthes in flower in Indiana, at my aunt's house. My family had driven out for a typical weekend visit, and as we were walking up the front steps, my mom asked what those pretty pink flowers were. "Oh I don't know the name," my aunt replied, "I just call them rain lilies." Because I have always had a naturalistic temperament (and yes, because I was a little gay boy drawn to "pretty pink flowers") I always remembered rain lilies, though I didn't see them again until my twenties when my friend Eddie Woods grew them in Lexington.
In Houston, I would stop the car to jump out and examine the smaller white-flowered zephyranthes (z. alba) and a sweet little lemon-yellow one (z. citriodora?) that grew right through the lawns of dense St. Augustine grass. And I bought pink zephyranthes bulbs at the local nursery to plant in my garden, where they multiplied like crazy.
Here in the north, the bulbs have to be protected from freezing (and, I've found, from squirrels). Two winters ago, I had them in a hanging pot that I hung in the laundry room; half of them rotted from getting too cold. So last winter I hung the pot in the basement stairwell (we have a dirt-foor basement, very spooky and totally useless except for maybe burying a body). So these flowers are a long-awaited treat.
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