By Anita Garner
People say Naked Ladies are practically indestructible, but I assumed I’d lost mine. Earlier this year in my yard, a tree had to be removed right next to where the Naked Ladies bloomed last summer, and everything around the tree got uprooted.
I like it best when Naked Ladies show up in unlikely places. At the edge of town there’s a strip of land alongside the road and that patch of earth, unlike the rest of this mostly manicured area (Mill Valley is a very well kept little village) remains inexplicably overrun with weeds. Last summer, a gorgeous line-up of feisty Naked Ladies popped up in the midst of the weeds. I wonder how they got there. Hope they’re back this year.
Driving in Sonoma County to visit friends in Sebastopol, I turned off the freeway to take a parallel road through the beautiful countryside and Naked Ladies nodded at me all along my route. I arrived at the driveway of my Sebastopol friends and admired the profusion of Naked Ladies along their fence. My friend, the only person I’ve ever heard say a discouraging word about a perfectly harmless pink flower, said, “I don’t like them. Never have.” I asked what does he have against Naked Ladies and he said, “They make me sad. They have no leaves and that’s no way for a flower to be.”
I, on the other hand, applaud their fortitude. Within the last week, the Naked Ladies have started marching all over town, so just now I checked the bare spot in my front yard and sure enough, four of them are poking through. Soon, these little shoots will once again resemble the grownup Ladies in the picture above.
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