{"id":2942,"date":"2013-06-06T03:00:50","date_gmt":"2013-06-06T07:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/?p=2942"},"modified":"2014-02-09T15:05:07","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T20:05:07","slug":"the-canna-lilies-are-in-bloom-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/2013\/06\/06\/the-canna-lilies-are-in-bloom-again\/","title":{"rendered":"The canna lilies are in bloom again."},"content":{"rendered":"

Such a pretty flower.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Actually, they bloom pretty much all the time around here.\u00a0 There is, however, a brief few weeks when they die back and look all brown and scraggly.\u00a0 Then, their foliage turns green again.<\/p>\n

And then!<\/p>\n

All of a sudden!<\/p>\n

Flowers!<\/p>\n

Mine look like this<\/a>, all orange and white.<\/p>\n

Where yesterday there was nothing but green leaves, today there are exuberant open blooms.\u00a0 And I hear Katharine Hepburn’s voice in my head:<\/p>\n

The canna lilies are in bloom again.\u00a0 Such a strange flower!<\/em><\/p>\n

In that odd, magnificent, Connecticut Yankee, Hepburn voice.\u00a0 (The line is actually “calla lilies,” but who are you to quibble with the voices I hear in my head?)<\/p>\n

The cannas are not strange except in so far as I have not killed any of them yet.\u00a0 (Not much of a green thumb.\u00a0 I may have mentioned it.)\u00a0 I haven’t even been able to kill the ones I’ve tried.<\/p>\n

My cannas are meant to be tastefully confined to the flowerbeds within their concrete borders.\u00a0 A few of them didn’t get the memo.<\/p>\n

I mow them down.\u00a0 They come back up.\u00a0 I dig them up.\u00a0 They sprout again.\u00a0 They are an unrestrained flower, if not strange.<\/p>\n

But, I am thankful, thankful, thankful for something that blooms far beyond my poor power to ignore, neglect and actively thwart it.\u00a0 I have blossoms out my office window for at least six months of the year, if not more.<\/p>\n

The grasshoppers, touch wood, don’t seem to like them.\u00a0 Occasionally, a little brown lizard will pretend to be the dried out center of a bloom\u2014dangerous to my blood pressure and his life if I happen to be deadheading the old ones to make way for the new.\u00a0 But, generally speaking, they are maintenance-free.\u00a0 They don’t care if I water them or not.\u00a0 They don’t care if they get any sun or not.<\/p>\n

They just go on being bright and cheerful.<\/p>\n

I am thankful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Such a pretty flower. Actually, they bloom pretty much all the time around here.\u00a0 There is, however, a brief few weeks when they die back and look all brown and scraggly.\u00a0 Then, their foliage turns green again. And then! All of a sudden! Flowers! Mine look like this, all orange and white. Where yesterday there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2942"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2946,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2942\/revisions\/2946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elainesmithwrites.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}