Okay, it’s a laboured title, but an apt one. Someone gave me these pink hyacinths in a pot of three when our daughter Lucy was born, 21 years ago. I let them ripen and dry, and thought little more of them.

Later that year, we bought a house – the one we still inhabit. The previous owner had had some work done on the sewer pipes, and the excavation revealed a long strip of sandy soil. When we took possession that November, I hastily plopped in some bulbs. Most of them were new.

Oh well, I thought, might as well toss in these hyacinths. I imagined them to be fairly short-lived.

Twenty-one years later, the “new” bulbs have long since been strangled by maple roots. Yet, two of the three Lucy hyacinths still emerge each spring. And the third was eliminated only by my overzealous digging one year.

They may be less floriferous, but they’re still hardy adventurers. Just like our Lucy, as it turns out.