No. 212: Beauty and Sadness

"Beauty and Sadness" by Tom Wills, August 2013. Watercolor.

I painted "Beauty and Sadness" four summers ago, and recently had an occasion to revisit the piece and put it into a new frame. The lone lily now is a large patch of earthbound sunshine along the side of my deck, about three feel tall and four feet long.  -- TW

I live in a neighborhood where most people are fairly meticulous about lawn maintenance. We plant, mow, pick and prune all summer long. Some mow every other day, trying to beat down Mother
Nature, fearing she will reclaim the woods that we have tried to own and control.

The black paint is still wet!

The lawnscaping at my house is largely scavenged: Trees I grew from seed or bushes found and trimmed, hostas from a neighbor, lilacs that I have divided.

Dirt is not brown. It's every color but brown.

"My" woods are a welcoming dumping ground for everyone's lawn scraps. And
every now and then, something sprouts in the cool shade. There have been
pumpkins, mums, gladiolas, horseradish and other things that I've rescued
and brought into the sunshine.

Highlighting the petals.

One of the things to sprout some summers ago was a lone tiger lily.
Now, I have loads of tiger lilies around my house. They are the orange side-of-the-highway variety, with the long and finger-y bulbs that are easy to dig up, divide and grow.
I dug up this pathetic discarded lily and moved it to the side of the deck with its lily kin, and watered it, and then forgot it.
By its lonesome, it grew and bloomed.  Just one flower, big and beautiful -- and pink/orange/red, with a yellow center.
It is not a child of the highway.

Roughing it in.

Surely it came from the yard across the street, where the young couple regularly cull their beds and bushes and leave the trimmings as land fill in low spots in my woods. I noticed that their lilies are, in fact, pink/orange/red and yellow.

So, this little lily will live away from its family across the street, but will thrive among its adoptive orange cousins. I suspect that its few finger-y bulbs will fan out over the years until there are more red flowers.
Or perhaps it will get wild with its new orange buddies, resulting in a new color palette.

This painting is not for sale and was given as a gift.

A sprout in the dark got a little help, then drew upon its natural inner strength to become something beautiful.
I know a select few people like that. They are my favorites on this green earth.