The Flower Bed Bandit – Part 1

Once upon a recent time, not so very long ago; a young husband named Mr. Barry and his lovely wife, Ms. Teri, decided to find the perfect place to raise their three beautiful daughters. They looked for a very long time until they found the perfect place that would need some tender loving care and a few final touches to make it just exactly what they wanted.

They added a fence around the back yard to keep their daughters and their dogs safe when they played. Then they added an above ground pool for the daughters to swim in during long summer heat. All it was missing was a flower bed around the front of the house and along the sides.

Miss Teri loved lilies; all types of lilies; calla lilies, day lilies, star gazer lilies. The list went on and on. But there was one lily that Miss Teri did not think she would ever have because she did not know what the lilies name was. The lily had pink blooms that came up on a single spiky rod that grew out of the ground with no leaves of any kind. Her Nana had these lilies when Miss Teri was growing up and she had always thought they were beautiful but she had forgotten the name her Nana had told her they were called by. Now she couldn't get Nana to understand even what kind of flower she was asking about. So Miss Teri knew without the name she would not be able to find the lily so she just gave it up and planted all the other lilies that she loved.

One fine spring morning Miss Teri counted all her beautiful lilies. There were yellow, red, and orange Cannae lilies, purple crocus, orange and gold day lilies, and gold star gazer lilies. But there was a surprise for Miss Teri! There growing in the middle of her carefully planned flower bed showing their beautiful pink flowers were the lilies that she did not know the name of.

They had not been anything she had planted or counted on growing; they had just worked their way from below her carefully planned flower bed and made a home for themselves, not just in the flower bed but in Miss Teri’s heart.

She counted them until she saw their number was over a hundred and she knew by the time they bloomed the next time there should be at least half that number again or maybe even twice that number.

Miss Teri asked everyone who visited if they knew the name of the surprise lilies but no one knew what they were. Then Miss Teri had a call that she was going to get a visit from her Nana, Ms Alberta. Teri knew that as much as Ms Alberta knew about flowers she would finally know the name of the surprise lilies.

And sure enough when Ms Alberta got there she told her the lilies were called Naked Ladies. Ms Alberta also told her that was the largest bed she had ever seen of them.

 Continued tomorrow -