Sunday, June 24, 2012

Orange Kisses in the Ditches

Tiger Lilies Where We Live
There's an old superstition that smelling a Tiger Lily will give you freckles.

 The roadside ditches right now are intermittently splattered with these wild kisses of orange.  A sweet legend from the ancient past tells that a Korean hermit stopped to help a wounded tiger by removing an arrow from its body. The tiger begged the hermit to perpetuate their friendship after it died.  The hermit promised he would.   When the tiger died, its body turned into a Tiger Lily.  Some time later, the hermit drowned and his body was washed away.  The Tiger Lily spread itself everywhere...looking for its beloved friend.

How sweet the reminder that a painful loss may turn into a thing of beauty.