Maybe it’s cliche, I don’t know.  They are beautiful flowers after all, not only stunning as an oriental lily, but that scent…that heavenly scent.

This lily was first introduced to me by a long ago friend named Belinda up in Saskatoon, her absolute favourite.  A bouquet of these in a room fills it with heavenly scent.  So when I planted one in my lily garden to remind me of the times I spent in Saskatoon, it seemed strange that after a few years it began to grow more stunted until last year, all it did was throw up a spike of leaves without any blooms to speak of.  This particular bulb I suspect is not doing well in the kind of soil I have it in, and it may do better once it’s moved over into the new garden.

Back in my 20’s I spent a lot of time running away from myself, as probably many of you have or know someone who did.  To me, it was easier to run away to Saskatoon on the week-ends, take time out to spend on the soft silky beach at Cranberry Flats, eat fattening and delicious meals, smoke way too many cigarettes and other substances, and dance my ass off in Divas, the local gay bar up there.  It was safe because my relationship with my friend Belinda made it safe.  The only down side was that as I grew, our relationship and our friendship grew apart until now, most of the relationships with the people I did know there in Saskatoon are just memories.  I had a lot of fun in Saskatoon, but I made a lot of mistakes and eventually had to come back, settle down, and rediscover who I was here in my own home.

I love how the day lilies compliment orientals by pushing punches of single spiked colours through the foliage of the day lilies that seem grounded, almost herbaciously hedge-like.  I’ve got a few orientals in my side garden that will have to be potted up come spring, but the star gazer, if I can get it to stay alive, and thrive again, will be a good reminder for me of my times past.

Right now we’ve had a bit of a reprieve from the freezing cold temperatures that I’m told were actually at times colder than the surface of Mars.  I’m thinking about potting up the lilies, the friends that I’ve made out in that west flower bed that I need to take with me; not so much hoarding, more like book marking the time that I spent here.  In a way, they’re the memories I can choose to take with me and hopefully hold onto and use to help me grow a new space.