That's beautiful. And it's a rose I've been wondering about too so thank you for posting it. If I can ever get any pictures that good I'll try to post them too. Mutt

artemis, I remember when parents would smoke in the car with their kids. My parents did not smoke, thank goodness . Hubs parents did smoke in the car and everywhere else, too The tobacco smoke gets into everthing and I know that littel boy hubs must have smelled terrible with that smoke in every fiber of his hair and skin and clothes. Thank goodness that sensibilites have changed! People used to reek of that smell. Even up until the last couple of decades when we went to visit his family we would have to wash and air all of our clothes after we got home. And you can never get that smell out of a house. I like a lot of air circulating around in a house. Air conditioning and tobacco smoke are two things that have changed in my adult lifetime. Many more have air now and very few stink up the house and all in it with tobacco. I cant remember the last time I actually was in the presence of a smoker. But, we were tougher back in those days. No one told us kids not to go out because it was too hot or too cold . (deep south, and Alaska) . We did not have air cond and we never thought twice about it. It was just life. We never drank out of a plastic water bottle, either or used liquid body wash, and we grew up just fine. I love a warm summer night in a clean fresh bed and with the whirl of fan in front of the opened window. It is so soothing, to me. And, to make it even better is to have a sun dried sheet. Yes, I know that it sounds like a cliche, but it is true for me. The same for a towel. I like that slightly rough feeling, but I never use fabric softener anyway and I find the smell of such chemicals to be offensive and invasive. I love a well ventilated and perfume/scent free house.

Your beds sound like they would b the perfect spot for Lycoris. They're a bulb which prefer a deep, fertile soil, which doesn't necessarily dry out or 'bake' during the summer. I don't think it was summer wet which did in your first try. Most of the species are naturally found along river banks and flood plains, and mine did poorly until I moved them to a spot with summer shade and a year round damper soil. Some of them can still be fussy, in spite of how easily they seem to grow for other people with deeper soil.

Woodland conditions. I had one nice clump at my other house that thrived; planted lots more and none of them lasted. I had extra roots (ordered in bulk) so gave some to my next door neighbor -- they grew like weeds over there but mine disappeared except that one original big clump. I think it might have been voles or some other creature having at the roots -- she had cats that she kept outdoors much of the time, so that's the explanation that made the most sense to me. Because literally 40 feet away she had a lush carpet of them and I had zilch (well, not zilch -- ONE). I took that one clump with me when I moved and it's now well established. Also added more and they're all doing well and spreading. The conditions I have them in here are moist soil, part shade for the quickly expanding patch, and semi-dry soil, part shade for that one big clump -- it isn't spreading, but it is a big healthy clump. So I think moister soil encourages expansion.