Paradise lost

Posted 7/10/19

The flowers you see here need no introduction.

They are stargazer lilies. Their fragrance is subtle – floral yet intoxicating. If their pollen touches a white blouse or shirt, a yellow stain …

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Paradise lost

Posted

The flowers you see here need no introduction.
They are stargazer lilies. Their fragrance is subtle – floral yet intoxicating. If their pollen touches a white blouse or shirt, a yellow stain results, one impossible to remove.
I was checking my late mom’s place for storm damage when I spotted stargazers blooming along the front yard’s fence line. Were she alive, those blooms would have been in a vase gracing her table.
I cut a stalk with a flower in full bloom and 2 yet to open and ferried them across the Savannah to my place.
Stargazer, such a lovely name, mysterious and majestic. I’m no botanist, but I can research things. Lilium stargazer, a hybrid, belongs to the Oriental group.
People often label stargazer lilies incorrectly as “Rubrum” lilies. Rubrums, a commercial lily, have flowers that point toward the ground. The downward blooms made people think the blooms had wilted. Leslie Woodriff, a lily breeder in California, did something about that. He developed a lily that looks up. Thus, he named it stargazer.
Flowers and family make a memorable tandem. Back when my parents were alive, their yard bloomed spring through summer. From daffodils to stargazers, butterfly bushes, rose bushes, snowballs, crepe myrtles, you could count on seeing color, bees, and birds in their yard.
It seemed a paradise and was, but no more. With apologies to poet John Milton, I best describe my parent’s yard today as paradise lost.
How easy to spot a home where no one lives. The house itself can look as it did when people lived in it, but a mournful yard betrays it. The loving hands that wielded mowers, shears, hoses, and weed eaters are no more. Some plants turn feral and take over the place. Weeds choke others. Like their owners, some die.
A few weeks ago, I pruned shrubs and pulled Virginia creeper from my parent’s home. That helped its appearance, but I could do little for the roses, overtaken by grass and weeds. I could, however, rescue the lilies.
It was like having my parents back one more time. You see, Mom used to cut a few lilies each June and send them home with me. She and Dad finally gave me my own stargazer bulbs to grow, and I did.
They bloomed for years until men cleared a nearby forest. Uprooted deer spread out and discovered my yard. They’ve eaten the blooms for 5 straight years. So far, the deer have not come to munch on the blooms this year. Fingers crossed. (I don’t believe Mom knew that her lilies could kill bloom-eating cats. She loved Tiger and Socks more than her flowers, yet she brought the toxic blooms inside.)
My stargazers are on the verge of blooming. When they open and stare into the sky, they’ll add a touch of paradise to my yard. I’ve been holding my breath that deer don’t rob me of their wonderful blooms, hopeful that paradise will be regained in my yard for the first time in 5 years.
I look forward to the day when other loving hands restore my late parents’ yard to their rightful beauty, a place of blooms aplenty.

down south, stargazer lilies, stargazer

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