Red Spider Lily of the Surprise Lily group.
Surprise Lilies are called that because the leaves that are so lush in the winter here in Florida die back and disappear for months before a flower stalk suddenly emerges from the seemingly barren dirt and produces a vivid flower head about a foot off the ground. After the flower stalk dies back, the leaves begin to emerge again and soak up energy during the winter months. If you forget where you planted them--or even if you didn't forget--the sudden emergence of the flowers over a few days time, seemingly from nowhere, is a delightful surprise.
One of the great gifts we humans have is the ability to experience pleasant surprises. Unlike the unpleasant ones, pleasant surprises don't activate our fight or flight impulses. They let us linger and be amused or captivated, and they activate our imaginations in fun and exciting ways. We may not be alone in the animal kingdom at being able to experience pleasant surprises, but we certainly fortunate that we can.
One of the pleasant surprises I've had from starting this personal web site is that I have been able to keep track of the web addresses of those who have visited the site. Using and online URL tracker, I can tell, roughly, were these visitors are located. Many, of course, are web addresses of my friends, but many are from people around the world. One of my poems seems particularly interesting to several people from France. There have been other visitors from Ukraine, Germany, England, Canada, New Zealand, China, the Middle East, Russia, South America and Africa. That is rather astounding to me. Of course, some only look at the introduction page and move on, but others seem to enjoy exploring the site. That gives me a lot of pleasure. I hope they have found something that gives them pleasure as well.
If you should visit my web site and want to share your impressions of anything you see, please feel free to leave a comment. Whatever you may say will add a pleasant surprise to my day.