Naked Ladies

The garden has been a complete disaster this year. Tragedy and travesty.

In May we had a couple of trees taken out of the back yard for more sunlight, and the crew smashed and took out more than half of my tomato plants. Then when we left town for a couple of weeks back in June, I forgot to set the sprinkler system. The excessive heat left most of my plants looking literally as if they had been set on fire upon our return. I was able to salvage some of the herbs, tomatoes, and peppers, but the damage had been done. We weren't the only ones with the problem: friends and family called us in search of some good home-grown backyard tomatoes. That made me feel somewhat better.

Then in August I took out a flood insurance policy on our house, thereby jinxing us into not receiving a single drop of rain ever since.

Weather forecasts clearly show that it will Never. Rain. Again.

Ever.

Reminds me of a silly song we used to sing as kids:

Oh, it ain't gonna rain no more no more,

Ain't gonna rain no more,

How in the heck can I wash my neck,

When it ain't gonna rain no more?

Once I had an old gray dog,

I wish I had 'im back,

He chased the big pigs over the fence,

And the little ones through the crack!

I found something similar to it on YouTube; the words aren't quite right, but you get the gist of it.

No matter how much water we poured into the yard, the heat and weather factors just would not cooperate. Now I understand Grandpapa's frustration during his farming days. It makes much more sense to me why he wanted a weather/crop report from me when we'd travel through the Delta to visit when I was younger.

So you can imagine my utter shock when I saw this outside the window the other morning!

Mom and Cindy dug up these spider lilies, or lyroris radiata, from Cha-Cha and Papa Doc's house up in Canton years ago. I planted them in the first few months after we moved into this house, but they never came up. I eventually gave up hope and forgot about them.
These were Cha-Cha's favorite flowers. She called them naked ladies because they have no foliage; just a slender green stalk with an exquisite red Amaryllidaceae on top. You should have heard my phone call to Mom, "There are NAKED LADIES in my back yard!" Without missing a beat, she responded, "They're in my yard too!"

If Big Brother was listening to our conversation, I'm sure he's investigating via satellite right now.
But why did they decide to come up this year, of all times? Nothing but dirt is currently growing in the yard. Even our evergreens are browning up. But we have naked ladies all over the place, throwing caution to the wind and stubbornly visiting us, making the yard look not so forlorn and crispy.
The only thing I can figure is that Cha-Cha is pleased about the Peachick in my belly and letting us know it in her own way. I hope they come up every year forever.