The flowers that bloom in spring (if planted at Christmas...)

A friend often gives me an amaryllis bulb at Christmas - the kind that comes in a square box with a beautiful picture on the outside.

Inside you find a dry, unpromising-looking bulb, a green plastic pot, an English muffin-shaped cake of compressed peat, and directions for producing your very own Georgia O'Keefe moment.

After immersion in an astonishing amount of water, the peat muffin expands exponentially, more than enough to fill the plastic pot. (My other pot plants love the leftovers!) After burying the bulb in the pot, you move it to a warm sunny place, and in a very short time voilà - a strong, proud, distinctly phallic green stalk springs up.

No leaves - they are cut back to the point of invisibility before the bulb is packaged. Lack of leaves emphasizes the beauty of the flowers when they emerge.

Last year's amaryllis was a deep, vibrant red. After the flowers were gone, I left the pot alone, watering only if it dried out - and by mid-summer it had sprouted two or three tall, sword-shaped leaves.

Usually we need these indoor bulbs to remind us of spring, but this year we've had almost no winter, and outside all kinds of flowers are out. A huge camellia across the street from our building popped its first hot pink blooms at the end of December, and by now has dropped a pink carpet of fading flowers all the way down a flight of concrete steps.