The first thing you have to learn about gardening

by Nori
(South Albany VT USA)

One of the first conversations during a garden consultation seems to always include an incidental reference to "lilies" whereupon it turns out that the client actually indicates a clump of daylilies.

This happens so regularly that I find myself making the correction by rote, with a short explanation about the differences between hemerocallis and lilium, but I have to admit that when I started my first gardening job for a local landscaper, I made the same mistake.

I received an odd look, but no comment, and only sorted out the difference by myself a little later on, when I had entered whole-heartedly into a gardening obsession and a consuming study of every aspect of gardening topics, starting with plant identification and botanical Latin.

After gardening professionally for 22 years now, my kids think I should be qualified to write a book, and the last time a client mentioned using "the lilies" that we had, and I had made the usual response, it occurred to me that perhaps this has given me an effective opening line for the (rumoured) book: "The first thing you have to learn about gardening is that daylilies are not lilies."

It could work...