Are the leaves a healthy green? If so the soil acidity should be OK. It might be low on phosphorus or potassium. It think your tiny buds are foliage buds, not flower buds. Hopefully I am wrong, but I don't think so. There is nothing you can do now to make it bloom this year. But what you do now will make it bloom next year. First and foremost it needs good drainage and not too much water but some during a drought. Second, it needs sunlight which you seem to have. Third, it needs good soil. I would add some Hollytone before the leaves open this spring. Use at half the rate recommended on the container. Do not dig around the roots, they are very shallow and easily damaged. Fourth, it may be root bound. If you didn't open up the roots when you planted it, they may be strangling each other. The only way you can tell this is to dig it up and look. The roots must be kept moist when you do this or it will die. When you plant it you must open up the roots. I fun a box knife down from top to bottom on 4 sides of the root ball to cut any roots growing circularly. Fifth, make sure you mulch it. This won't make it bloom, but it will help keep it happy and healthy. Here is a link that might be useful: How to grow rhododendrons and azaleas.

Try this for succesful cloning. Get a small tupperware container 2-4"" deep with lid. Paint both the top and outside of the bottom black so no light can get at rootzone. Drill a few holes in the lid - 1/2 to 5/8". Get a small aquarium air pump, hose and stone appx. 12$. Put bottled water to within 1" of the lid and add a minute amount of liquid rooting hormone. Take your cuttings and scrape 1/4" at bottom carefully. Cut some plastic collars to hold the cutting in the holes and cut out light. Turn on the pump with the airstone in the water. If you use a larger container, you may want a flexible air stone of 6"-12" bent around for more dispersion of air bubbles. You can either put the clones into the water up to 1" or just touching as the water and oxygen will burst at the water line and keep the cuttings moist. Takes 3-15 days for cuttings to root. Near 100% success this way. I would use either a compact floro or tub floro above the cuttings on a 20 hour day cycle. Good luck TiMo

I have one or two from the seed growing marathon we had last year which are about the same size and growing slightly rapidly now in monsoons here. All my plants seem to take a long time (6 months) prior to settling down and starting to put out new growth. The patience they have taught me inadvertantly is amazing. They just dont budge. Many died in the process, but of those that survived the first 8-9 months they are finally doing well. So just let your seedling be and keep on caring for it..it will break out and leave infancy behind giving you a really lovely plant ( like Gill's). It is a beautiful one. How they are now This is a pic from Feb 2016. You can see how long it took them to start really growing... they are like that...so feed them the osmocote and wait....

I wish I had gone there while I lived in the Denver area. I spent a lot of time exploring great places and towns. Of course Manitou Springs has been one of our favorite places. When people would come from out of the state to visit I always took them there. Going in the mines was very scary for me. I would have enjoyed this experience. Thanks for the window into your time there.