Forgotten again, with unexpected results

You know how around Christmas you'll see a lot of posts about beautiful Amaryllis blooms? You'll never see that from me. Oh, not because I don't like Amaryllis or don't grow them. I do like them and have a couple that I've been growing for a few years.

The reason you'll never see me posting about Amaryllis in the winter is that I always forget about mine and they end up flowering way too late. For instance, mine is flowering right now.

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I picked up a couple of bulbs on clearance for $0.50 each maybe 4 years ago. That first year they bloomed just when they should have, sometime in January I believe. Then I put the plants outside for the summer to recharge the bulbs and that's when the forgetting started.

You're supposed to put the plants in a dark place after a certain amount of time, then pull them back out after another period of time so they'll be ready to bloom during or after the holidays.

My approach is usually to completely forget about the plants until the first freeze approaches, and then put the plants into the garage on a shelf for a few months until I notice them and pull them out, when they then produce some nice, big blooms again.

This year after I put the plants on the shelf I cleaned the garage and moved the shelving unit that held the plants to the back corner. This is the darkest corner of the garage, where I rarely venture or even look.

Until yesterday when I installed a light back there, and discovered...

The plants were tired of waiting and decided to break dormancy without me! Not a big problem with the one plant, but the second one was a bit taller:

It's growing through the shelf, so is now completely trapped in this dark corner until this flower fades!

It's one of the craziest plant-related things I've seen recently.

The other plant was shorter and could be removed, so I put it outside to enjoy its first light this year:

It's light-starved, but should be fine in a few days. The foliage faded exactly as it was supposed to, and turned a rich, almost orange color:

The bulb looks fine under a few layers of old "onion skin", but the soil is pretty dry and could use some water:

I should note that I've never repotted these bulbs or done much with them at all. I'll keep them watered during the summer (when I remember) and give them some fertilizer once in a while, but they just sit there in their original cheap plastic pots, inconspicuous and easy to forget.

I'm pretty sure I will forget to put them in the garage at the right time again, but you can bet once I get them in there I won't be forgetting them until spring again.

Maybe I'll store them on the top shelf this winter, just in case.

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