If this is climate change, I'll make the best of it

What a year this is for nekkid ladies.

That said, this column could go in many directions. Don't let your imagination lead you too far astray.

Many of you, particularly those who like to get dirt under your fingernails while working in the garden, know that if you say "nekkid ladies" at the end of July or early August, you're talking about a flower -- a particularly striking one at that.

Nekkid ladies are known by many other names: surprise lily, spider lily, magic lily, resurrection lily, hurricane lily, naked lily and pink flamingo flower.

If you haven't noticed them this year, look again. Search for tall leafless stalks with baroque pink flowers. The stalks and their blooms seem to pop out of the ground overnight. The blooms were nourished by foliage resembling thick daffodil leaves in early spring. The leaves die back for a couple of months -- just long enough that you forget about them.

Then, shazam!

The most common variety of nekkid lady is Lycoris squamigera, a member of the amaryllis family. The lilies are native to China and Japan.

My mother-in-law's cousin, Genevieve, was renown in the Kansas City area for her green thumb. Her flower beds tended to be crazy quilts of blossoms and colors. Among her favorite flowers were the nekkid ladies. She loved saying "nekkid."

My mother always said there was a difference between "nekkid" and "naked." To her, "naked" was perfectly good way to describe someone with no clothes on. On the other hand, "nekkid" meant you had something else entirely on your mind.

The gleam in Genevieve's eyes when she talked about her "nekkid ladies" makes me think she and my mother were graduates of the same school of thought.

The nekkid lady displays around Cape Girardeau this year are more spectacular than I ever remember. Perhaps it's because of the unusually mild spring and cool summer we've had.

The weather, as climate-change scientists have been telling us for years, is going through some dramatic shifts. This may explain why we're having cool, moist Oregon weather while Oregon is suffocated with 100-plus-degree days. All that heat in a part of the country where air conditioning is rare.

My wife and I once had a neighbor, Mr. Moberly, whose glass was always half empty. No matter what you said, he came up with a gloomy response.

"Great day, Mr. Moberly," you might say on a cool, sunny day at the end of July when you'd least expect it.

"Great for locusts," Mr. Moberly would say. "Won't make a corn crop this year."

I'd hate to think what Mr. Moberly would make of this year's weather starting with the first week of March, when we had our last killing frost. We missed most of the violent weather we've come to expect each spring. Moderate temperatures have made us wonder if climate change is such a bad thing after all. And now we've had one of the coolest Julys ever.

It makes you wonder what's in store for the rest of the year. I know what Mr. Moberly would say: "The Big One's coming!"

I'm not sure if a Big One would plummet from the sky or rumble up from the bowels of the planet. Mr. Moberly was never much for details.

I'll take the optimistic view that we're in for a few surprises this fall and winter. I'm looking forward to a brilliant riot of autumn leaves -- accompanied by cool, sunny weather that gives you the urge to sit in a football stadium and root for the home team. And I'm expecting a powder-sugar coating of snow on Christmas Eve that won't even stick to streets and highways.

And I'm looking forward to a winter with no freezing rain. Not a drop.

What do you have to say to that, Mr. Moberly?

jsullivan@semissourian.com<I>