Where No One Can See

In preparation for my move to Atlanta, I began pulling bulbs this last weekend. I should have begun sooner, but between deadlines and life, I wasn't able to do it until now. We started with the tree lilies since there were only 8 of those. At least there were 8 when I planted them. It's been three years and I've had multiple stalks come up, so I assumed there'd been some replication going on. Little did I know what's been going on underground, away from my sight.

First, let me show you a couple shots of what the tree lilies looked like in 2010. This year wasn't the best year they'd ever had thanks to the deer coming over for a midnight snack. I used to like deer, but that changed when I planted flowers.

Tree Lilies at a distance [image error]
Closer view of the tree lilies [image error]
Because I knew I was going to have to dig the bulbs up, I hadn't bothered to cut down the stems yet so we were able to go right to the tree lilies instead of digging around the general area. Even knowing how lilies can spread, I was still surprised by what I found. There were roots going everywhere! At first, we thought the little roots were from weeds or the grass or something. It wasn't until we pulled the bulbs out that we realized those flowers had thicker roots below and many, many, many thinner roots above the bulb. That was a huge shock. But then I pulled them out of the ground and found monster bulbs.

A few of the bulbs that were pulled [image error]
Those are five of the bulbs. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say five bunches of bulbs. Look at the monster among monsters on the left. It left me stunned. Out of the eight original bulbs planted, I ended up with about 25 bulbs after three years in the ground. There would have been more except I didn't keep the really tiny ones and there were two clusters of 2 bulbs that I was afraid to separate since they were so merged together. Like conjoined bulb twins.
Close up of the bulbs [image error]