Catalogue Countdown

The Eaton's catalogue was a mail-order catalogue published from 1884 to 1976.  Each summer, sometime in August the catalogues would arrive from Simpson's-Sears and Eaton's and my friend Janet and I would go through every page, deciding which items we liked best.  So our August was a very busy month of decision-making.  By the 50's and 60's they weren't selling houses and barns in the catalogue - that was earlier decades.   The Travelchannel.com site says that there is no shortage of fun things to do in August - fro the PGA Championship and US Open to the world's biggest food fight, and the world's longest yard sale.  I forgot that this is the month for the Burning Man Festival in Black Rock Desert, NV.  As the site says:  "Aug 28 - Sept 5 The Man burns in 38 days!" What will you do in August in the Golden Horseshoe area?

Lilycrest Gardens

Just a few more lily images from Brian's Lilycrest Gardens hybridizing field.  The first one is a Marathon lily - one of the first to bloom in June.  It has small down-facing flowers, and is one of the delicate little lilies to bloom.  It is quite a contrast with the lilies that follow in the season.  In July, during the peak blooming there are beautiful bold colours, huge flowers and some of the plants reach up to five feet tall with 10 or more flowers on them.

Lilycrest Gardens - Full Bloom Week

My brother is a lily grower and hybridizer.  He has a field on 5th Street in St. Catharines, and it is in its prime right now with lilies in bloom.  You can see him loading the van with lilies to go to the National Show.  The past two days was the Ontario Regional Lily Show in Burlington at the Royal Botanical Gardens. Lilycrest Gardens brings to mind the "lilies of the field" in the Sermon on the Mount: 'Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin...' Brian's field grows Lilium lilies - and the Madonna Lily is a special flower of Christian symbolism.  However, it is unlikely to be the lily referred to. It doesn't grow in Israel. Tulips, poppies, daisies and other wildflowers have been suggested as candidates for “lilies of the field". And the likely candidate is the flower Anemone coronaria, the Crown Anemone.  It grows in every part of Israel. There are many possibilities to choose from as there are hundreds of flowers with Lily in the common name and dozens that grew in Israel.  The reference remains interesting and mysterious, with no definitive answer.