One of our best Christmas presents this past holiday was a dead looking, papery-coated lump stuck in a hand-made pottery bowl full of gravel. Our eight-year-old daughter Soren made the pottery base at school, filled it with crushed rocks, and the teacher stuck in the middle of this mess (sorry . . . this loveliness) a bulb. All we had to do, Soren instructed, was put this lump in the middle of the table, next to the windows, and add water. In fact, she said proudly as she held up her art-work, it would make a great centerpiece to the table!

Sure enough, after a few days some spindly, hair-like projections began to worm their way out of the lump and down into the gravel. A few days later, thicker greenish white sprouts began to burst out of the top of that previously lifeless looking lump.…