"Miss Annie"

My wife has some sprigs of a lily plant that has been in her family for nearly 100 years. In fact, they've had sprigs of this for so long, that it's acquired the name of Miss Annie.

We've always been told that each year before the first frost, we should take the plant indoors, water it well then cut it all the way back and cover it with a dark towel. Too not water it again until the next year when we take it back outside after the last frost of Spring.

Although it's bloomed before, this year it had a whoppin' eleven flowers and was really beautiful in its shades of pink with a pale center (see above photo).
No one ever knew exactly what type of flower Miss Annie is, altho' I could tell as I stated before, it's a lily. I assumed it was a wild variety that probably originally grew in Kentucky and was first dug up from the ground of some old "homeplace".

However, my wife recently informed me that the plant had been brought over when her Great Grandmother came to America. She couldn't remember if her Great Grandma was Irish or Scottish, but since her name was McLean, I would think the latter.

So this got me to wondering if this variation of lily probably isn't native to The Americas at all, but from the British Isles? Doing some research I discovered a similiar variety of lily named The Welsh Annie. Could this possibly be where they got the name for the flower? Seems like more than a coincidence. But, anyway, if anyone out there's a flower expert you might clue me in for certain.

And, in other items, I think I'll really not comment too much on the deaths of a couple of people that have recently passed on here since that news has been blogged so much in the past couple of days, but I will say that I'll miss the artwork of Jim Aparo. My first experience seeing his artwork was on the Wander back up strips in Charlton Comics' Cheyenne Kid in the late 1960's, as well as one unforgetable issue of Space Adventures (No.60) which featured a story called Paul Mann and The Saucers from The Future that I always liked a lot.

I thought his Spectre strips in Adventure Comics for DC were tops! Plus I was always a fan of his Aquaman and The Phantom Stranger work. Many fans considered him a Neal Adams wannabee, but I can tell a lot of differences between their styles and his work to me was always instantly recognizable.

And, James Doohan, one of the most likable of the original Star Trek crew. having one of the original crew members passing away to die-hard Star Trek fans is similiar to one of The Beatles dying to a music fan. But...it was getting expected. People grow old. They develop health problems, sometimes both physically and mentally. None among us is immortal. Doohan was both wonderful and unforgetable in his roles, and he will be missed as well.