Tiger Lily

I’m not quite sure what happened this spring. For some reason, the deer haven’t stumbled upon our tiger lilies, and for the first time that I can recall, the plants lining the driveway are actually in full bloom. Each year, just as the buds are nearly ready to burst, the deer feast overnight, and I awake to find just bitten off stumps of stems remaining. It’s disheartening. For weeks, I’ll watch them mature, thinking that surely this time they’ll survive the onslaught.

This June I’ve been especially ambivalent, though, observing them but not expecting anything to change. To my surprise, however, I now have dozens of plants flowering and no sign of the deer. The lilies have been nearly a decade in the making, and it’s been well worth the wait.