Looks great outside like this:

And lasts for weeks inside, like this: (In the dining room.)

I've been gardening hard the past few weeks -- so the best way to be lazy here in early June is to forego looking up stuff like the latin name of this flower. But I have to -- because I know it already but don't know how to spell it and I've been an editor too long to get that kind of lazy. It's altstremaria. (I would have spelled it wrong.)

I'm just not going to go studying about how it's a tuberous-rooted plant or anything like that.

I started with one clump of these lilies in my front yard, maybe six or seven years ago, and there are two thriving patches there now. And another four or five clumps in the back.

These are photos from the front yard, taken at dusk, so they don' t look as vibrant as the ones above.

That first one is the site of the original planting, and the second one is more recent. You can in the background of the second photo that  there are lot more of them. Those are in my neighbor's front yard, and she's a real gardener, so they do even better when you're not so lazy.

Case in point: It's in the backyard, on the edges of the vegetable garden, where the Peruvian Lily have kicked ass the most. (That's where the first photo, at the top of this post was taken, and where the ones in the vases came from.) The stalks are taller, the flowers more bountiful.

For two simple reasons: They're on the drip irrigation line, so they're watered more regularly, at the same time as the veggies, and they get more sun.

The lilies pop out of the ground in the spring, from bulbs that spread on their own, but I've also dug them up and put them elsewhere, and they pop up wherever they're planted. Without fail. They need some water -- the winter rains are enough to get them started, and this time of year, the first week in June, they're at the peak of their flowering. If I water them judiciously — and that's what my drip system on the timer is supposed to do — they stay at that peak a good part of the summer.

Actually, I've never kept track before, but this summer I will. When did the peak start? I'm going to go with May 13. I'll keep taking pictures through the summer. Stay tuned.

I've been gardening off and on for more than 20 years, and much more "seriously" over the past few. Not lazy at all in terms of putting in the hours with the shovel, but lazy in not being linear and task-oriented. That's for the workday. I'm not a farmer, I'm a gardener. I have no quota to achieve.

But this is the first season that I've written about gardening. I wrote a few riffs last fall, but they were broad or random compared to what I find myself doing now. Which is chronicling progress, or picking a theme like easy plants.

Talking about the garden reminds me of an email conversation I had recently with my brother Mike, whose dog Miles died in May. "He left behind surprisingly few great accomplishments," he (my brother, not the dog) wrote, "but what a great friend he turned out to be."

As if being a great friend weren't accomplishment enough. A garden is, arguably, easier than a pet, though perhaps not as much of a friend. Certainly, plants rarely roll in their own poop or steal boxes of chocolate off the dining room table and scarf them down, cardboard and all. (Yes, I used to have a dog.) And sure, weeds come along, but they usually don't bite or scratch.

Oh, did I mention that the Peruvian lillies last for weeks indoors. Here's a photo I took last night. They've lost some color and there are petals that have dropped all over the floor, but hey, they've been sitting in those vases for 17 days now.  

There are far more than enough blooming outside that I can clip another batch for indoors and still have plenty left in the garden.