Ooh Look!

There's a naked lady dancing in my garden. See.

I have to say Pisces was a tad disappointed when he found out I meant a belladonna lily also known as an Easter lily.

This particular lily is special to me because I transplanted these bulbs from my parents' garden shortly after we moved here. My mother's lovely garden is long gone - the suburb where I grew up succumbed to the lure of the developer years ago. The block we lived on was large for a suburban area - when the subdivision was planned the area was semi rural so the blocks were all larger than the traditional Australian quarter acre and they all had provision for a rear lane. This was for the use of the night cart men who would collect the cans full of night soil from the outdoor privy built up against the back fence (the dunny in Australian slang), leave an empty one in its place and cart away the full buckets. Why they had taken so long to sell the land I have no idea but by the time my parents built the days of the night cart were long gone (for which we were all very grateful) and so we had the lane area added to our already large block. This was just as well because my brothers and I had something of a menagerie, while Mum, a country girl, grew flowers, fruit and vegetables.

The days of the quarter acre suburban block are also long gone. In an effort to contain the sprawl of the city larger blocks are now being in filled or their houses are demolished (as is the case of my childhood home) and replaced with multiple units. My parents eventually sold up to go off in their caravan but before they left I dug up these bulbs and they've been flowering in my garden ever since.