I was scrounging in garden centers for bargains when I was ambushed by a display of paperwhites.

The pretty white flowers gleamed on the dark green box, and the price wasn't much. About the same as a couple of lattes.

So I bought some.

I have only ever forced a bulb once. (I don't even like the expression. Sounds like "at gunpoint.")

My neighbor Patty gave me an amaryllis for Christmas last year, and it actually grew and bloomed for me.

But, mostly, I am "The Land Houseplants Forgot." I don't have much in the way of windowsills or good light, except through the sliding glass door in the kitchen.

I sometimes put plants on the floor there, such as the basil when it is cold outside. But generally, the family objects.

Anyway, I bought a paperwhite narcissis kit: five bulbs, soil and a little plastic pot. I did this even though I have read time and again that paperwhites, for all their virginal beauty, have a distinctly unpleasant smell.

Paperwhites are also famous for flopping over from the sheer weight of themselves, but blogger Margaret Roach of A Way to Garden, suggests mixing eight parts water to one part gin or vodka and using that mixture to water the bulbs the first few times.

She got the tip from a veteran gardener at one of her lectures who swears the booze keeps the plants' leaves short.

I'm gonna give it a shot (modest bartending joke). Thank heaven the trick doesn't call for white wine...

Photo credit: Flickr/acertainworld