Editor,
At the corner of Gray Avenue and St. Vincent Street grows a gorgeous bed of Tiger Lilies, which until recently was in full bloom. However, our municipality seems to take great exception to these Lilies because last year at this time they sprayed them with an herbicide and soon the Lilies were just a bed of rotting yellow leaves.
To my surprise, they refused to die and came back again this year and once again, at the height of their glory, the town sprayed them and once more they are a bed of rotting yellow leaves.
I can think of many unreasonable reasons for doing this, but a reasonable explanation escapes me. Perhaps someone can put forward a sensible reason.
To me, this is yet another example of vandalism on a small but noticeable scale. Tiger Lilies are a rhizome which means they have a deep interlaced rooting system and as such are perfect for preventing erosion on embankments, which is precisely where these Lilies are located. Perhaps in the past some farsighted person planted them there for this purpose, as well as to beautify the embankment.
Tiger Lilies are to be found everywhere in Meaford but, to my knowledge, these are the only ones that are singled out for this unfair treatment. I would hope that someone in our municipal office would look into this and put a stop to it. Natural beauty is becoming something of a scarcity in this crazy world of ours.
David Blackburn, Meaford
