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From “Pink” by George Crabbe in The RHS Book of Flower Poetry and Prose by the Royal Horticultural Society:

This, this! Is Beauty; cast, I pray, your eyes
On this my Glory! See the Grace, the Size!
Was ever Stem so tall, so stout, so strong,
Exact in breadth, in just proportion, long;
These brilliant Hues are all distinct and clean,
No kindred Tint, no blending Streaks between….

From Hybrid: The History and Science of Plant Breeding by Noel Kingsbury:

“[If] a pink flower crosses with a white one, the progeny may show a variety of shades of pink.”

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Hello!

This supercalifragilisticexpialidocious lily is a newcomer to my garden this year, it having been adopted by The Gardener to replace one of last year’s Tiny Epic Asiatic Lilies that fell asleep during the winter and never woke up. “Summer Sky Pink” is a really good name for this variety: its pinkness is certainly reminiscent of that kind of pink-purple-magenta color that surrounds clouds at the horizon this time of year, especially before or after summertime thunderstorms.

Fresh from the garden center, it produced quite a few big blooms for about two weeks in early June. I learned it’s a cross between white Longliflorum (or Easter Lily) and pink or red asiatic lilies. It clearly retains the large, thick-to-the-touch blossom petals of the Easter Lily and, toward the center, yellow and orange highlights. You can see some Longliflorum in one of my earlier posts, Easter Sunday 2021: Yellow Daffodils and White Lilies.

Thanks for taking a look!

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From The Lilies by Henry Percival Spencer:

‘Tis passing strange this life of ours,
Nought in this world can we explain;
We are helpless as the flowers
Forced into life by April rain.

What reap we for our joy and pain
Except the hour in which it lives?
He who can fathom Loss and Gain
Can tell us what the Future gives.

The Lily comes, the Lily goes….

From Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden by Eleanor Perenyi:

“Sooner or later every gardener must face the fact that certain things are going to die on him. It is a temptation to be anthropomorphic about plants, to suspect that they do it to annoy. One knows, after all, that they lead lives of their own: plant the lily bulb in the center of the bed and watch it come up under a brick near the edge; pull up a sick little bush and throw it on the compost heap, and ten to one, it will obstinately revive.”

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Hello!

Here are a few more photos of my Tiny Epic Asiatic Lilies — some from the previous post along with a small handful of new ones (those whose backgrounds were very cluttered in the originals), all reprocessed on black.

Thanks for taking a look!

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From Green Thoughts: A Writer in the Garden by Eleanor Perenyi:

“Some lilies are more vigorous than others. The June-flowering Asiatics don’t care what you do to them. They can be cut quite close to the ground and still return in full force the following year. The others seem to know they are more beautiful and expensive… and to cut them severely is to court their oblivion.”

From The Garden Triumphant: Victorian Garden Taste by David Stuart:

“You would know by the scent of the lilies that summer was here.”

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The lilies in the galleries below — a variation of Tiny Epic Asiatic Lilies — are not actually tiny but they’re definitely epic. The flower petals unfold to the size of the open hand of a small person (me!), and with their striking colors and textures, they make great subjects for close-up photography. The petals are quite thick and silky to the touch, and you can almost feel tiny bumps where it looks like they’ve been sprinkled with cinnamon radiating from the center.

Unlike some lilies, these blooms lasted nearly a week — which gave me plenty of time to aim a macro lens at them and try different combinations of light and different camera settings before I settled on these photos. I’ve featured them here before (see, from last year, Epic Lilies (1 of 3), Epic Lilies (2 of 3), Epic Lilies (3 of 3)), so this time I concentrated on photographing just one or two isolated blooms and getting the focus, color, and textures as accurate as they appeared to me in the garden.

Thanks for taking a look!

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