Detail of one of our tiger lily flowers before erupting from its calyx and corolla.

Another detailed view of one of the Stargazer Lily flowers in our back yard. Crystal Lake, IL

Platycodon, aka, Balloon Flower, in one of our flower beds.

A Tiger Lily in our yard. This photo, at first (and maybe even after this explanation) is framed a little strangely. One would probably expect the stamen and stigma to be closer to the bottom of the frame, and indeed I may revisit this image and crop it that way. But I really like the out-of-focus filament of the other stamen in the background and feel like “losing” them to a crop is the wrong choice. Maybe not. Tiger Lily flowers are incredibly hard to photograph as they almost all face straight down, and due to the extreme curl of their leaves are quite large in three-dimensional space.