One of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me was the love of flowers and plants. As far back as I can remember, my parents shared their love of growing things with my brother and sister and I in the simplest of ways - by observing and pointing out the flowers, plants and trees that grew all around us.
We would be driving in the car on a Sunday drive somewhere, and my Mom would say, "Oh, look! There are some naked ladies in that yard!" And of course, we kids would press our noses to the windows and say, "WHAT? WHERE?!?" And Mom would point to the tall pink flowers growing straight up out of the dirt, without any green leaves in sight, and say, "There they are! Look at them!"
I can still remember how funny we kids thought that was - that flowers could have such a shockingly appropriate, but silly name... And imagine my delight to find some of those very same Naked Ladies appearing in my front yard this summer!
Here they are, shyly revealing themselves a little bit every day...
until they're fully exposed in all their glowing pink glory:
They don't last long; they'll die back soon, and then their green leaves will appear, long after the flowers have bloomed in a chorus line of pink. So keep an eye out.... and don't be surprised if some Naked Ladies show up in your garden!
3 comments:
We always called them suprise lilies. Interesting to hear the different name. I can see where that would suprise some people.
They are beautiful! I wish I had some!
I've also always known these as surprise lilies. I "rescued" some earlier this summer - a farm behind us was going on the auction block and when I was wandering around the property just to take a look, I found a patch of lilies. So I went back home, grabbed a shovel and a box, and rescued about a dozen or so. They're now living behind our back porch. :-)
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