THE BEAUTY OF A DAY

Why would anyone plant Daylilies in their garden?  Each bloom lasts but 24 hours.  What a short life these individual flowers have – yet the mother plant thrives.  In fact, she can live through the harshest and driest of times.  I know this to be true, because all three of my Daylily plants survived the Time of Great Neglect.

You can’t really harvest the stalks as cut flowers, unless, of course, you want a very time-sensitive arrangement in your vase.  Daylilies require you be an early bird if you truly want to gaze upon their glory, for it is with the rising sun that the bloom opens wide its petals to all that the day has to offer, its little stamens sticking out like antennas . . . searching the airwaves for vital information that fuels growth and development.

As the day wears on, the widely expanded flower begins to wither and by evening, you are forced to witness its mortality.  Next morning, the throat of the bloom has collapsed into a tight, elongated sarcophagus.   Gone.  Never more to be appreciated.  You, the caretaker, reluctantly pinch the closed tubular flower from the thick stalk, knowing that by doing so sister buds will be provided energy to open and live within their own 24-hour cycle.  And this is why we gardeners love the Daylilly.  Because she lives and dies and lives again with each rising and setting of the sun.

Well, I’ll be damned if cancer hasn’t re-entered my life once more.  Not me.  Not Genny.  But someone I love dearly.  I go to the garden for contemplation . . . and perhaps even more so for consolation.  I happen upon the Daylilies.  It comes to me that each day in our lives is a single blossom.  Each night, a lone flower that folds into itself, never to reopen.  Tomorrow is a new opportunity to fight the cancer beast.  Tomorrow . . . a new bloom.