There’s something irresistible about water life to me. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember. If it swims or floats or lives in, on, or near water or gets filed under ‘A for Aquatic’ it has an appeal to me. A garden without a water feature of some kind is not a garden for me. When we came home from work today I couldn’t resist making photos of the first lily of summer. I’m amazed to even see flowers this year. It feels a bit like we’re in a movie of the Selfish Giant – winter arrived in this garden about nine months ago and it just hasn’t gone away.

The first lily I ever grew I’d hooked from the nearby lake. I planted the rather unpromising looking tuber in a pond made from a 44 gallon drum that’d been cut in half lengthwise. I don’t recall where the half drum came from but I imagine it’d had a previous life as a farm trough. I wedged bricks under the edges to stop it rolling from side to side, and ignored the book advice that said the water had to be deep to get lily flowers. I was so excited when my lily sprouted beautiful green leaves spattered with tones of burgundy in late spring, and even moreso when my patience was rewarded with buttery yellow flowers. So much for book advice. I’d really hoped for red flowers – to me the ultimate – but the yellow flowers were beautiful.

They were the first flowers I’d grown ‘on purpose’. I wanted them to last and last. Part of the joy of water lilies is their fleeting nature – the largest, the legendary Victoria regia, produces a large white flower one day, the flower turns pink the next, and is gone the following – leaving just the memory of the stunning flower and the pineapple fragrance. The yellow lilies did last a little longer, but their lives are measured in days, not weeks.

Water lily flowers, floating elegantly above the green water, their roots firmly gripped into the clay at the bottom of the pond – perhaps the most common metaphor for rising about it all – still provide me with lessons for the day. I guess no one said it would be easy. Oh, for more poise and elegance.

Manifesto
08. Every day choose to bring about change.
28. Every day you will be tested.
39. Every day trust that there is a bigger picture. You are a part of it even if you may not know what it is.