Following submitted by our knower-of-all-things-related-to-bulbs, Mike Smedley.

It's December 11, late afternoon, and the sun skims low in the southwestern skyline. Winter Solstice comes in 10 long nights. A storm is coming, the weather prognosticators say, with harsh blowing snow and bone-crushing single-digit temperatures as the coup de grace to the tawny, supposedly dormant garden.

But in the front yard, there is one remaining and defiant hold-out. It's a blooming crocus, the very last flower of the year.

I didn't know whether to celebrate its resolute audacity or mourn that it is, without a doubt, the very final flower of 2022. Maybe celebrate and mourn simultaneously. 

A brave lilac-blue Crocus speciosus (autumn-blooming crocus from the Caucasus Mountains) in December is a source of wonder. But I can only pause to appreciate and anticipate that in 10 weeks, this corm's golden cousin Crocus ancyrensis (so called Golden Bunch Crocus from Turkey) will brighten the late-winter world, maybe even poking up through lingering snow with the same insubordination.