Figure 1 – Lilium in the time of COVID-19, May 2020, Salem, MA. (c) DE Wolf 2020.

Ok, it is the Sunday before Memorial Day in the United States. So I am going to take a breath and think about Lilies. Of course, there are many great lily quotes. But I am going to focus on the the fact that skies are bluer and the sunshine brighter due to the decrease in carbon emissions, due, in turn, to the quarantine and isolation. Climate change deniers take note. Nature is, for a deadly moment, a bit more beautiful. The flowers and Earth might be willing to speak more clearly to us. We are made to hear their song, but are out of practice.  In Lewis Carrol’s Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found there, there is a garden of live flowers.

 ‘O Tiger-lily,’ said Alice… ‘I wish you could talk!’ ‘We can talk,’ said the Tiger-lily: ‘when there’s anybody worth talking to.”