Dear Calla Lily

Dear Calla Lily,
I love you. I mostly always have. You were there when I got engaged. You were there preserved in plastic while I waited to be married. You were there in silk when I got married. You were there these past seven years of marriage in all your glorious forms, potted, planted, vased, silk, plastic, prisma color, pencil, paint, foam even. A series of you hangs in my front room. I have loved you for your elegance, and simplicity. Your color and shape. I have loved you for the memories.
But I write to inform you that your standing is in jeopardy.
This is a serious threat.
Let me begin this way:
Gary bought me a bouquet of flowers of Orange one fine day. It was lovely.

I had begun a new relationship with orange. Every single Lily of orange in that bouquet bloomed, long after the other flowers had died. Even you.

You were beautiful though, I admit.
We bought plants for our flower bed. I bought these hoping they would be as fragrant as their pink sister. I almost did, but did not, in the end, buy you.

Then another bouquet. This time you were absent.

Lily was not. This time she was a ravishing pink purple and white.

And she SMELLED! She was intoxicating and filled the room with her fragrance. I found myself aimlessly entering the room just to get another sniff. And again every single lily opened and shared it's fragrance.
Again flowers, and after last time Gary was sure to get Lilies.

The ones open when the bouquet arrived we not in the best of shape. But here we stand two and a half weeks later as the last flower finally fades. There were so many lilies un-opened, but they all made their appearance and shared their fragrance. Every single one of them.

I'm not sure you would do the same Calla, I'm just not sure.

So this year when I had to pick a new flower for the flower bed.
I chose this.

Sorry Calla.
I hope you understand the draw of cutting them and bringing them indoors to sniff was too over powering. If it helps, I did try and convince my 5 year old to pick you, but she wanted the one named "little princess" over you.
Love,