Yes, I probably need to get out more! But I was very excited to find, on a quick trip back to our farm garden on the weekend, that my Josephine's Lily (Brunsvigia josephinae) had shot up two wondrous flower spikes for the first time.

It is difficult to capture this amazing plant in a photograph. It has similar growth pattern to a Naked Lady (

Amaryllis belladonna

) in that the flower spikes appear from large, bare bulbs with the foliage appearing well after the flower is gone.

It is a rare bulb, and was given to me by a gardening friend with the instructions to 'guard it with my life'!

It supposedly takes many years before it will reward the grower with blooms, and yet mine has flowered within two years. How special!

The lily was reportedly named after Empress Josephine, Napoleon's first wife, who was a patron of horticulture & established famous gardens at Malmaison in France.