try to be more alive

I walked fry through an alley today. not the safest place for my little shoeless dog, but I was multi-tasking - taking out the bathroom trash and taking him out for his morning walk. he likes the alley, despite the glass and sometimes sketchy visitors, probably because of the smells and squirrels who roam freely there. I like the alley because walking through it causes me to find my way back to my street from a different location... and I get a different view of tower grove park or my neighborhood.

but today, I actually enjoyed it because of the single orange daylily growing out of a crack between the concrete of a driveway and a neighboring house's garage. I thought, what a brave and adaptable little plant! and so pretty! I thought basically the same thing when I fell in love with these particular flowers over two summers spent in michigan. I can remember a night of camping in sleeping bear national dunes, coming over a dune and into the forest to see another lonely orange daylily among the shaded dunegrass. or when I'd walk daily past the lemon-colored bunch on the hill before my lake cottage the next summer. and now, as I leave my apartment in the early summer, there is a whole group of them standing almost taller than me that I like to watch open and close with the sunlight of the day. they're my favorite blips of bright colors in what can be completely green-brown-black landscape.

so thank you, wikipedia, for informing me that this flower is not only NOT considered a true lily (which is sad, because I very much like lilies), but is also an invasive species to north america. that explains its ability to thrive in a concrete crack or crappy sandy soil: it will bully its way through an ecosystem just to live... and to delight most casual viewers with its beauty.

somewhere in my brain I'm forming an intelligent metaphor for what remains one of my favorite sights. something about adapting to organizational redesign, to living life authentically in the face of social norms, or persisting through rough patches in relationships...

but I can't quite get it out yet.