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Suddenly the yard was filled with color

Night was just about ready to give way to the dawn. It was just light enough for a yard full of purple flowers to catch my eye. I and the dogs walk by here several times a week. It’s like they appeared overnight. Some kind of daffodil? A wildflower?

Google identified them as Zephyranthes, sometimes called a Zephyrlily or Rain Lily. It’s a bulb that thrives in subtropical climates like ours. They tend to appear after a rain shower.

The thing I found interesting is that this wasn’t a garden. It’s a front yard. These bulbs were planted, propagated, and sprung up through the lawn. Okay, so that lawn wasn’t that great. But the flowers were!

My dad had lots of flowering bulbs in his gardens. The crocuses would show up first, sometimes while there was still a little snow on the ground in the early spring. Tulips and hyacinths would follow, filling the front yard gardens with bright colors. But only for a week or two. Then they disappeared till the following spring.

That was up north. Garden life is different in Florida. The only flowers from bulbs I’ve seen here are amaryllis. But now I’ve seen the rain lilies. I would love to have a whole bunch of them sprout up overnight!

2 thoughts on “Suddenly the yard was filled with color

  1. Bill, years ago when we lived in Dallas, I planted Daffodils in the front lawn. It gave me joy to see them bloom before the grass greened for the summer, and they were bloomed out by the time mowing was needed. I also had an area in the backyard lawn for wildflowers. Stone had strict instructions not to mow until they went to seed for the next year.

    I have often wondered what the new owner’s reaction was the first spring after we moved!

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