This poor red spider lily had been snapped at the base while still in its prime. It’s one of my group of fall lilies that have started to emerge in the front parkway. Unfortunately they aren’t providing me with any photographic moments, because the surrounding English ivy was scorched to death during our seventy plus days of triple digit heat. The ornament you see hanging above and to the right of the vase is a Christmas ornament by local artist Frances Bagley.
Well, at least it’s the first in my garden. It looks like I’m going to have a whopping total of four Red Spider Lilies. Last year I had five. So what gives? And on top of that, since purchasing and planting them, it took two years before they bloomed for the first time. One must be patient when it comes to gardening and dealing with perennials. Especially perennials that can survive Dallas’s weather and temperature extremes. Between last year’s nine to ten months of El Niño accompanied with too much rain and too little sun and this year’s months of extreme heat and intense sun exposure, no wonder my plants don’t feel like performing the way I’d like them to.
Oxblood Lilies. Every year towards the end of August, the Oxblood Lilies make their annual show. But dang it! Because their foliage had died back earlier in the summer and not knowing where the bulbs were exactly (they tend to continually migrate toward better sun exposure), I AGAIN find that I have unintentionally planted summer annuals around them, and they just aren’t able to compete with the crowd. Will I ever learn? The bulbs planted in the front parkway among the English Ivy show up well, but not the ones in the west bed.
And then there are the Rain Lilies…