Vases are for flowers

I love flowers; in the garden and in vases. Flowers have a way of enlivening the spirit. It is the fragrance that greets you or the blooms that bring colour to a space that attracts even the casual observer. Flowers by their very design are usually delicate in nature. Petals balanced delicately on stems or stalks hanging in patterns that nature decreed. Well, in my garden I must rethink my age old notions of what constitutes a flower. The one outside my bedroom window has a growth habit to surpass Jack's beanstalk. I checked it out this morning and my best estimate is that it now measures almost two metres in length. Its girth cannot be measured by my thumb and index finger. Its weight is massive. The fact that the plant continues to support its weight surprises me. It is far from glamorous to my eye. Birds don't share my view for I have witnessed their attempts to extract the sweet nectar from the troubled flowers. Their tortured shapes defy the excitement that I recall when I first saw the bulbous bud emerging from the base of the silver grey leaves. What is this flower, this bloom that grows so long?