How do you know they are Lilies?

The answer to this question may be found in the work of Mr Anthony James Donegan.  In his seminal epic "My Old Man's a Dustman" the answer is "Lily's wearing 'em."  Well, no-one is wearing these, but they are definitely lilies.

This is our second cycle of lilies as the more polychromatic plants have died down.  What these lack in variety they make up for in size: each flower is close to 20cm across and the tallest plant (still in bud at the time of writing the initial part of this post) is close to 2m high!  See below for an update on this

Elsewhere in the garden we have dahlias of various varieties including a linear bed along the front of the house.

The most numerically common flower at the moment is a large white daisy.  This image shows 2 of approximately 6 clumps around the main lawn.

Continuing the educational thrust of this blog, and again referring to the tuneful ditty cited in the first paragraph, the chorus includes the insight

"... wears great big 'obnail boots.   'E 'as such a job to pull 'em up he calls 'em daisy roots."

Combining the pinks and whites we have a Hebe bush. Although this has been here longer than we have, we think this is the first time it has flowered.  At that, it is doing better than our traditional purple Hebe veronica which has roots going down into the overflow from our catch tank.  That has obviously had too much water and is not looking happy.

We also have isolated outbreaks of Gladiolus.  Despite Barry Humphries' disdain for these flowers we rather like them.  Frances has plans to use them in a more structured fashion in future!

The monster lily started flowering on 18 January. The image shows the crown,  I have assessed ts height with Frances as an indicator of height: overall I rate it as 1.3 Franceses (whereas the Yellow Box nearby is 15.9F)

Tats one is growing in a pot and has been a few dayslater than those in the Garden which are now in full glory.

Approximately two weeks after the pink lilies came out they have been joined by some white ones.  I believe that is about the same interval as for Robertson, but about a week later in both cases.

To avoid confusion it might be noted that the leave behind the flower are those of a rampaging cucurbit planted as ground cover.   Although, come to think of it, they are not dissimilar to water lily leaves!