You might have seen some brightly colored flora around the City University of Seattle campus the last few months, or perhaps some green stems struggling mightily to sprout!

Several employees at CityU Headquarters have been participating in a lighthearted gardening competition since November. Their goal: to see who in the building could grow an amaryllis bulb the largest before Christmas rolled around.

Originally the brain-child of Ruth Nichols, who’s grown them in the office for the last few years, the competition crossed multiple departments and included Kirk Shattuck, Linda Cooke, Cindy Singleton, Sue Seiber, Tarsi Hall, Sabine Saway, Jill Freyman, Agnes Valenzuela, Marge Chow and Craig Shieber.

While the contest is purely for bragging rights, no outright winner has been declared – the group still has to wait on a few stragglers to bloom!