Yes, exactly. I've done some very disorganized attempts to find native plants that thrive in that kind of environment, but mostly they were desert plants and they didn't seem likely to survive the winter. I'm sure there's something -- aside from ragweed and plantain, which do like those conditions -- but in the meantime lilies are amazing.

It actually looks like one patch of mine will bloom. Amusingly, it's a volunteer. I'd planted the actual bulbs in the back yard, where they throve for a while and then disappeared. But I'd taken all the shredded paper packing for all the bulbs in that box and dumped it in the front as mulch for some crocuses. There must have been a flake -- a clove? -- broken off one of the lily bulbs in with the paper. YEARS later, three lilies sprang up. Recurved white ones. I watered them in time and they have buds. There are five or six individual plants now, and I really should put up some photos of them when they do bloom.

The rest are shaded out, I think, by rampant overgrowth. I expect them to come back if I do some pruning.

P.