When Tiger Lilies Roar

When Tiger Lilies Roar It was time to tape up the last box filled with all the odds and ends that hadn't made it into any of the other boxes, because I was just too tired to make another decision about donating or dumping. Then it was time to lean over the deck's railing and shake out the dust mop the last time before the For Sale sign was staked into the front yard. Then a splash ofcolorlazilynodded to itself in a corner offorgotten shade. It was a tether, in speckled orange. I turned and called to my mother inside the house, "Did the tiger lilies growing downby the basement come from the farm?" Once upon a time they were a dense jungle of tiger lilies growing by my grandparent's stone walkway, once upon a time they lined the side of creek and dusted the deep pools with rusted colored pollen. My grandmother loved flowers. She'd study seed catalogs like a mystic looking for truth in the new season's Blue Ribbon winner. JacksonPerkins roseswere shipped allthewayfromCalifornia. OrGeorgia. Someplace far away. Roses ran the length ofthe driveway, topped offby the tiger lilies at the door. Tenants live in the house now. There are no roses and the lilies are gone. Even the fence broke down, a section at a time. Now it's gone too. "Idugup thoselilies fromthefarmwhenIboughtthisplace," mymother said. "I don'tknowwhathappened to the onesbythehouse and along the creek. Gophers or ground hogs must have got 'em. I never did anything special to 'em here. Just tossed the bulbs down by the rocks and they come up every year." The lilies growing out of rocks by the basement were all that was left of orange blossomed jungles, seas of rust colored pollen, merchant bees 46 with their bags full of pollen and iridescent armored hummingbirds. "I need a bucket," I said. "You're crazy," said my husband. "They'll never make it in the truck back to Maine." "Thentheywon't," I said. "Ifthey stayhere I'llneverhave the chance to getthem." So we got another bucket and both of us dug. I cuttheblooms and carried an armfulintomycousin'shouse. Four feettall stems shimmered in a William Morris extravagance that could have hidden Guinivere and Lancelot in a lover's tryst. Right there in the dining room. The next morning we locked the buckets in the back of the truck and headed home. The truck was filled with family pictures, a knife my grandfather made from a spent saw, miscellaneous pieces of china and a chair that need reupholstering. The lilies were the first thing off. And after all that it was time to dig holes along our driveway up to the backdoor and drop the bulbs in. I worried about the lilies, hidden under the gray clay soil while a Maine winter covered them. We watched and watched until Thumb-sized stalks pushed aside mud season's excesses. They grew in May, more June and again in July. In August they bloomed. Itookapicture ofmyhusband standingwithalilyblossomcrowninghishead. 'Kentuckius tigras lilium' I wrote on a metal tag. Hummingbirds from Puerto Rico binged and avaricious bees could hardly fly with their heavy saddle bags of loot. Now I have my own kind of treasure. Next year there'll be more tiger lilies and more the year after that. Soon there'll prowl in anew jungle by the stone walkway to our house. And who would guess these lilies are a kind of mystical link found in a Catalog of Days, delivered from a place that is far away and now is lost in time? —Helen Stevens 47 ...