It wasn’t until my sister posted some beautiful photos of her ‘Muscadet’ Oriental lilies on Facebook back in July that I realized mine were “missing.”
I assumed the bunnies and chipmunks only attacked my new bulbs. I didn’t know they razed one of my favorite summer displays. ‘Muscadet’ has been wowing me every summer for a number of years now:
The flowers are 8 inches across with a heady fragrance that beckons you over for a deeper whiff. The bulbs send up stalks that grow about 3 to 4 feet tall and the flowers bloom in July.
The only thing that remains of my clump of lilies are some brown, 3-inch-tall stumps. I’m not sure the bulbs will be able to recover. I think I’ll wait to see what happens next summer before I try to replace them. In the mean time I hope the critters find something different (preferably in a yard down the street) to destroy because this has been one brutal summer for bulbs.