~ Consider the lilies ~

January. The dead of winter. The Great Darkness. The Deep Freeze. This time of year is all that, and more, for the people in our house. While The Man Of The House, the one who spent the first half of his life in England and Australia, grouses about the place, complaining that we live in the most inhospitable climate on the planet (I rather doubt this is true, but I have learned not to argue with an Englishman who has a burr in his boot), others of us are happily curled up by the fire reading seed catalogues and garden supply catalogues and lily catalogues. Most of all, lily catalogues.

Lilies have stood front and centre in my life. When I was small, lilies were what you grew when nothing else would grow. I believed, when I was small, that lilies were what you grew when you wanted to frighten small children into believing plants retained some sort of prehistoric memory and were just waiting for the unwary small child to pass too closely by so it could be gobbled up as a tasty, crunchy, yet juicy sort of snack. I can’t remember the origin of that terror, but it was a terror, nonetheless, one I am very glad to have outgrown. No gardening pun intended.

The lilies of my childhood were towering creatures, alive with colour and scent and movement. The sister of some relation or other had dozens of lilies flanking a narrow sidewalk bordering her house and it was both terrifying and exhilarating to risk life and limb running the length of that lily walk. Very Brave and Adventurous Children, that’s what we were. It wasn’t until I was much older that I learned to appreciate lilies properly. Perhaps it was because I had grown to be taller than the severe stalks and could look down into the up-facing blooms and no longer had to stare up at the down-facing blooms, so they all appeared far less intimidating. Perhaps it was simply that I had never actually been assaulted by the lilies, and so relinquished my fear of them in favour of admiration. It’s a much more peaceful way to live, really. However it happened, I’m glad it did and I blame my Great Aunt Lillias for it.

Great Aunt Lillias had lilies in abundant profusion. Her back yard was bisected by a stone walk and from that walk to the fence on either side of the yard there stretched a bed of lilies as dense as the lawn it replaced. She couldn’t remember how many varieties of lilies she had planted, for the garden had evolved over several decades, but she knew without doubt that certain of the lilies which had been planted had shared illicit relations with certain other lilies which had been planted, resulting in offspring which had not been planted, but had somehow managed to join the family. Because Great Aunt Lillias is a kind woman, she accepted these illegitimate children and welcomed them to the fold. It was in the lily garden of Great Aunt Lillias that my affection for these flowers budded. Gardening pun intended.

So the love affair with lilies had begun.

As with any obsession...that is to say, hobby...it is always good to have someone to share the passion, so with very little difficulty I recruited my husband. As it turns out, he had already been smitten. Neither of us can remember who first proposed the Lillias-esque lily bed, but it took root in our imaginations. We began with ten lilies. Ten, we reckoned, was a suitable, if slightly modest, number of lilies and from the day we ordered the lilies in the middle of The Great Darkness until the day they arrived by mail, we were as giddy with anticipation as kids on Christmas Eve. It was a great day when I was at last able to tuck them into their new beds. When they finally poked their little noses out of the ground, we celebrated in much the way parents of any newborn would. Because I have a tendency to name things, I promptly named the little reddish nubbins collectively ‘Babies’ and have continued address them as such, no matter their size. I like to think they flourish because of the attention lavished upon them, but I know that lilies grow in spite of just about any ill treatment. In fact, it has been suggested that lilies thrive on neglect, though how one could neglect lilies is beyond me. Either way, the lilies put on a show. Naturally we ordered more lilies the following winter. We ordered even more lilies the winter after that, all the while maintaining that we would abandon our ideas for a Lillias-esque lily bed on the grounds that it really wasn’t practical. The following year when the lily catalogue arrived, the flirtatious maroon-spotted, lime-faced beauty gazing beguilingly up at us from the cover completely shattered all our resolve and we ordered it. Plus half a dozen other varieties, of course. We are helpless, completely bewitched.

It is once again January. The dead of winter. The Great Darkness. The Deep Freeze. After spending several evenings choosing the lilies which would make up my annual ration I wrote out my lily order on the weekend while curled up by the fire. I had each of my kids choose a lily as well. Some of them took nearly as long as I did in the choosing, reading every description and studying every photograph. Some of them chose lilies because they liked the name. One chose a species lily, a plain, old-fashioned, been-around-a-hundred-years variety. Everyone had a favourite and it was interesting to watch the decision-making process. Three and a half months form now, the folks at the lily farm will nestle our new adoptees into boxes to send them off by post and we will greet the newcomers with the delight of kids on Christmas morning. I will take joy in tucking them into their new beds and I’ll whisper their new name to them, ‘Babies’.

We’re nowhere near the point of taking up the lawn to make room for lilies the way Great Aunt Lillias did, but I can see how it might someday happen. Entirely by accident, of course. When my kids chose their lilies this year, they also let me know which ones they want me to order next year. I’ve used the word before...perhaps it is appropriate after all: obsession. .:shrug:. Might as well call it what it is, eh?

Matthew 6:28-29 reads, “And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that not even Solomon in all his glory was clothed as one of those.”

It is true. Even here, in what some husbands call the most inhospitable climate on the planet, it is true.

Peace ~