I bought my usual bag of peony. Was able to find a bag with varieties not in my garden. They were better divisions than usual. I always pot them up the first year, transplanting into the garden after spring growth starts next spring. Here where we have lots of deer pressure, gophers also, it is nice to grow something they leave alone. Al

Thanks for the responses! I looked up "Hover fly" and the bulk of the literature refers to an insect that is too small to describe what I saw, but the "Narcissus fly" is described in some literature as hovering, so you are probably referring to the same insect. That looks to be my answer. Narcissus fly: the size is right (the grubs were large, over a centimeter long and the adults are the size of bumble-bees), the life cycle is right (the literature I saw says they remain in the larval stage over winter and pupate in the spring), the numbers are right (it says the females lay 2-3 eggs per plant before skipping to the next one), the behavior is right (they hollow out the bulbs from the inside), and there are a LOT of daffodils in the garden to attract pregnant females and expose the hippeastrums. Well, dangit. It's easy enough to protect amaryllis from narcissus flies if I ever put them out again: I can use some more neem oil or make closer inspections. But now I'm worried that we won't see many narcissus next spring. This year a lot of rain allowed the daffodils to retain their green leaves through July, so I was looking forward to a big show next year where they maintained their size and multiplied. But this summer when I was digging through the garden planting perennials, I came across a few daffodil bulbs that looked dead/rotted, and hoped it was just an anomaly and those individuals had gotten waterlogged for some reason during the rain. I hope the whole crop hasn't been destroyed by the flies. Thank you both for your answers. I didn't think I'd get an explanation so quickly!

oh my gosh,RITA.before you get finished planting all them bulbs,I think you are going to be wishing you had not done it. If not, you are going to be one sore acheing body.Lets hope I wrong about that. but if you get them all planted, you are going to have a gorgeous yard,and hopefully we are going to see lots of gorgeopus pictures. But, I sure got excited this evening, YOU know last spring, when I told you that the guy that cuts my grass brought halp with him, and he reached over my fence and cut down my oriental lilies that had sprouted and was about 4 inches high , that I had planted a couple months before that, and last spring I never had a single one came up, so I thought I had lost every one of them. well, this evening I was out there searching that spot, and lo and behold,I found 6 of them up. a couple of them are about 2 inches high,and the others are barely up, but,I was thrilled to see them coming up, through the weeds and grass there now, so I got busy pulling up weeds and grass this evening for a little while I cant do much at a time.so, some time this summer if I lucky, maybe I have oriental lily blooms to post too. Jean

Installing bipin fluorescent tubes with one pin outside the socket- easily done unawares- will soon cause the problems described, but not that quickly. Ballasts do unusual things. They provide a voltage surge, perhaps 600 volts for some type ballasts, to get current flow started in the lamp and then they limit the current flow to the correct amount. Once started, the nature of the lamps is to permit virtually unlimited current to flow through them. That would result in meltdown or explosion. Perhaps yours approached meltdown.