Hellebores Galore! (Not)

I read a gardening magazine a few years ago at work about this new-to-me interesting little flower. All kinds of interesting colour combos were photographed of sweet bell-shaped nodding flowers. I remember googling them sometime later on to discover that they are the perfect fit for my shady, deer-infested, woodsy back yard :) 

Time went by with Hellebores stored away in the back of my subconscious until one day I stumbled upon some at Brunswick Nursaries! The joy of an unexpected find! I bought two labeled Lenten Rose... Something-something hybrid and stuck em in my shady corner garden under my azalea. I checked on them now and then but they'd been passed their bloom time when I bought them, so I only had strange palm-and-finger-like greenery to deal with. 

This Spring I was reading about them because I knew they're early bloomers and should be expecting them to pop up soon. Turns out one of them didn't seem to survive the winter - the foliage turned brown and withered, while the other still looked green... As though it didn't experience the horrible winter the rest of us went through. I cut them both back to ground level then, and within a week (May 17) I had these little heads popping up from the one that survived!

What shy little darlings. 

Only 2 days went by and they opened up! 

They're so interesting and it's lovely to have a little burst of bright green and pink in the normally drowsy and slow-to-grow shady corner garden. 

I checked on them again today and see 2 or 3 more flower buds developing. The excitement!!

Needless to say, I'll keep an eye out for some more this year and plant some friends for this lady!