The Deer Ate My Daylilies!
No, this is not the newest and latest excuse for failing to turn in a homework assignment.
Remember those daylilies I mentioned in last week’s post? Those lovely daylilies, mostly from my father, that line the top of the wall of our front yard, and parallel the road? Those lovely blooms of yellow, orange, burgundy, pink, and peach?
Well, I went out yesterday evening to walk the dog and almost that entire row of blossoms were gone! Caput! Vanished!
I stood frozen in disbelief. Wait a minute, I thought, they can’t be done blooming that fast. I walked over and saw that my lovely legacy of lilies had been nipped in the bud—literally. In fact, in some cases, the base of the chewed blooms still clung to the stem.
I must have looked like the walking example of stupefaction as I examined stem after stem. Those darn deer, tired of eating the lush marsh grass and cattails that grow across the road, had decided it was time to sample the delicacies waving at them from our front yard.
I grudgingly coped with their demolition of our hostas in the back yard as the price for living in the country but this was truly an affront. My lovely lilies!
Oh sure, I know that next year the daylilies will send up new blossoms and I will once again be treated to floral fireworks of color because daylilies are a tenacious and hardy bunch, but I feel ambushed and cheated of at least several more days of glorious color. The remaining green fronds look as bereft as I feel.
Kind of how we can feel after someone—family member, friend, critic, or editor—has taken a bite out of our creative endeavors with criticism or dismissal. All our glorious colorful creativity running riot, shouting out joy and life so expressively—a rainbow of color for all to see one minute, nothing but drooping green fronds the next.
And yet, if we can be like the daylilies, persistently sending out more sturdy creative roots into the soil of mind and soul, regardless of the snipping and nipping going on above ground, then, with time and season, our creativity, our creative ideas and expressions can burst colorfully forth again, with even more blossoms than before.
We just have to be as tenacious and determined as the daylilies. And, as I did with the daylilies, using a little pest spray around us to discourage those deadly snackers wouldn’t hurt either!
August 11th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Dear Paula:
I had to write and tell you and your bloggers about a self-realization moment that happened less than an hour ago. It’s in keeping with your advice to embrace silence in our lives.
Now, if may seem strange, but my silence is while I’m driving, alone, in my car. And it has always been thus. I didn’t know it until I read Weaving a Woman’s Life. But riding in the car on a beautiful day like today with the windows open and the air conditioning off, my mind is apt to ramble farther than the car.
I’m ashamed to say that it’s August whatever and today is the first Saturday I’ve risen early enough to get to my favorite fruit and vegetable stand before their supply of gladiolus sold out. They’re usually gone by noon. I was there at 10 and only two bundles of glads stood soaking in water in the usual white plastic pail. I studied the two and picked the bundle with the least buds in full bloom because I know that glads will keep blooming even after the stalk is cut from the bulb.
It’s about a fifteen minute drive down the mountain and back to my apartment and about five minutes into the trip home I realized I, too, am a gladiolus. My only child died of cancer twelve years ago and with his death the stalk of my life severed from its bulb. There weren’t many flowers from that bulb over the next few years but there were plenty of gardeners who cared for the bulb left behind. They dug it up and stored it in the harsh weather. They replanted it in the good. And each year the stalks grew taller and more buds appeared and more flowers bloomed. Today, thanks to the gardeners, every time a stalk is cut, more flowers bloom more fully.
No more than the glads themselves know, I don’t know why I keep blooming each time my stalk is cut. But I lay the thanks at the feet of my gardeners: Kathy, Glenda, Judy, Mother Baigert, Zita and now, gratefully, I add you, Paula.
Sometimes I wonder why it works. Sometimes I wonder why the gardeners don’t give up and go tend a less work-intensive flower. I think I’ll try to stop wondering. Today I learned I’m a glad. As long as I let the gardeners tend me, I will give back blooms. And that’s a good lesson from a moment of silence.
August 11th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Liz,
Thank you for the lovely story and metaphor. Interestingly enough, before my father raised and bred daylilies, his pride and joy in his gardens used to be gladiolus! I remember him bringing in big sprays of all colors, putting them in a tall crystal vase that we had and then setting them on our fireplace hearth for all of us, but especially my mother, to enjoy. Absolutely beautiful! And worth all the effort.
Many beautiful things in life require commitment and tender loving care. Friends are one.
So, readers, what flowers are you?