Garden Dreams

As I consider the lilies today ...

My yard needs so much work. I am rarely there, an absence not by choice.

I dream of colorful beds of flowers, a Thomas Kinkaide sort of fantasy. Reality is stubborn-as-hell wire grass everywhere and the never-ending struggle with Virginia's capricious weather.

I will be giving a clump of some very special daylilies to a relative this week, a unique cultivar that was given to me years ago by a couple who were passionate about hemerocallis.

Good gardeners are givers and thus they live on. In my little 1/4 acre, flowering almonds and apple trees were the gift of an old friend now lost in the fog of dementia. Fragrant thyme came to me from a friend who has now passed away. Honesty plant with its purple blooms and silvery seed disc, evokes the memory of my great Grandmother, who grew it out West -- my Great Grandmother who I have discovered this week was a player for Her turn-of-the-century high school Girls basketball team. Imagine that.

I will make room for lilies this month.