One of the plants is a ginger lily. It has not really thrived because I don't really have a moist place for it. I've spent lots of time watering it in summer, but it seems to have had a rough go. Finally, I thought it was done in completely. Some guys with a skid loader rode over it. Then when I suggested to my husband that he check his drain pipe to make sure the skid loader hadn't crushed it, he did some vigorous digging in the area. Later I was dismayed to find a couple of ginger lily rhizomes lying, dried out, on the ground. Oh, well, maybe it was meant to be since the lily struggled so anyway. (And I struggled to keep it watered. Maybe we would both be out of our misery.) Quite a bit of poison ivy, stilt grass, and cow itch were in the area, and I sprayed weed killer there a few weeks ago. I did not see any sign of the ginger lily. Later, however, I saw the lily. But the hope I might have had that it survived was immediately shaken because it looked like some of the weed killer had hit the lily.
Later that day I passed by the area and stopped to weed a little around the lily. I saw another lily sprout as well that looked healthier. It appeared to arise from underneath a dead-looking, dried out rhizome that was on top of the ground. I put a little soil over the rhizome. Hope has been on a roller coaster, but I'm hopeful once again that I have a ginger lily. I'll update with another picture in a few weeks.
(Near the lily are some wild irises. I had tried to avoid some of them with the weed killer. I removed a few that were very close to the ginger lily. In the picture above there is also a bit of Virginia creeper, which I pulled out.)
As the saying goes, hope springs eternal.
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