Hellstrip Lilies

At first, I thought it might be the unusually warm days and all the rain, but lilies, especially the common orange day lilies (not true lilies) that were brought by early European settlers, had long graced my town. Perhaps it was just that specific gardeners had planted lilies where I could not help but notice their joyful spirit.

A woman told me that she was the gardener who had planted all the different lilies in the “hellstrip” by the sidewalk. She told me that she did not own the land where they were planted. I said I was sure the town would not mind, especially as she had carefully added stakes to keep the riot of color and form from flopping out into the street.















Spring & Summer Finds in 2023

Once again it has been an unusually rainy spring and summer with mushrooms in mossy spots in the woods as well as in our yards and even cracks in sidewalks.

Now that I have been paying more careful attention for a couple of years, I am finding examples that you might not normally think of as mushrooms, as well as slime molds with their fruiting bodies deposited where the wind can help with propagation.