After an unusually hot summer punctuated by equally unusual thunderstorms (including a massive hailstorm about 6 weeks ago), the first fall bulb flowers are appearing in Portland, Oregon. A week ago Colchicum kotschyi flowered in the bulb house; it is usually the first one to appear. Colchicum macrophyllum followed in a few days, still in the bulb house although I keep meaning to get it and its massive spring foliage out of its fairly moist corner and into the open garden. Today a row of little tessellated colchicums opened in the bulb lawn, which is now the dry brownish turf that you get if you leave grass to its own devices in this winter-wet, summer dry climate -- the winter-growing grasses overwhelm the summer-growing ones in a few years, and the former go dormant in summer despite weekly watering. Colchicum 'Innocence', formerly called C. byzantinum 'Album', appeared under a Douglas fir in company with Ceratostigma plumbaginoides, which I hope will form a ground cover for a bed planted with colchicums for fall and daffodils for spring. Also under the Douglas firs, and one of the few plants that will grow there, is Cyclamen hederifolium, mixed white and pink. I also spotted the first flowers on Cyclamen hederifolium subsp confusum, a particularly strong pink. Acis autumnalis, the autumn snowflake (formerly in Leucojum), is widely grown and is showing up here and there. It is almost weedy in this area so it's mostly coming up through mat-forming plants such as penstemons, thymes, and so on; some are among the "black mondo grass," Ophiopogon planiscapus f. nigrescens, which is particularly pleasing. Even more pleasing is a close relative of the autumn snowflake, Acis valentina (or valentinus; I'm not sure what gender has finally been decided on for Acis, which as a common noun is feminine in Greek, anyway). A. valentina is slightly more robust than A. autumnalis, and the cup-shaped flowers are pure white rather than flushed with pink at the base. I had a pot full of seedlings when I moved here three years ago. It lost its label, and I misidentified the bulbs as Galanthus and popped them into an ordinary perennial and shrub bed. They have proven very hardy (we had temperatures in the mid-teens F last winter, twice) and enjoy the well-mulched clay soil. I must remember to lift them next July and spread them out. Amaryllis belladonna has not deigned to bloom (as usual) but it did survive the winter. Someday I hope it will pop up its naked stems, silhouetted against a wall now becoming clothed in the pretty patterned leaves of Parthenocissus henryana. Two of its close neighbors also survived despite my lack of optimism: Iris unguicularis, which appears able to grow anywhere, and Alstroemeria isabellanae, a plant that has entered commerce here recently. I think the latter is Brazilian, so it gets summer water and flowers in late summer, much visited by hummingbirds. It spreads underground and pops up here and there through the mat of Parthenocissus foliage. Jane McGary Portland, Oregon, USA}