Daylily Haiku Thursday | What color is your soul?

pink is the color

my soul so wishes to be.

pink. its oh-so me.

(l-r: H. 'Orchids and Gold,' H. 'Memphis,' and H. 'Neon Pink Flamingo.')

I want to remember... | Scenes from daylily season 2010

I want to remember fearlessly wearing my pink and green rubber boots to Flower Day 2010, where I shared my love of flowers at 5:00am with 250,000 of my closest friends at Eastern Market in Detroit, MI.

I want to remember making many bouquets of lilium 'Silk Road,' 'Touch,' and 'African Queen'  and that intoxicating smell of them in my kitchen. 

I want to remember my son in the garden this year - running his small hand up a frond of russian sage to capture the smell, hanging out with me while folks toured our yard, building this clubhouse for him among the plants and him asking me if he, too, could be my daylily friend someday.

I want to remember the sparkling jolly ranchers in my great-grandmothers century-old bowl, waiting to be enjoyed by garden visitors on tour days.

I want to remember the HUGE swallowtail butterfly that flitted about hundreds of daylily buds in my garden when I didn't have my camera.

I want to remember the sunsets and rainstorms and words said (and not said) that made this summer really memorable.

I want to remember my few stolen moments alone with a daylily icon, Charles Applegate as he chauffeured me around Kingwood Gardens in a golf cart and pointed out qualities in daylilies he found distinctive.  Being stranded there for hours when our tour bus broke down was a surreal experience and I am so thankful that Kimberly and Nicole were there to share the experience.  Not sure I would have survived the same without them.

I want to remember the generosity of my gardening friends - sharing daylilies, sedum, hosta, allium, creeping jenny, forget-me-nots and more.  I hope I was equally as generous to others.

I want to remember the joy in my dad's voice on the phone as he described all my seedlings blooming at his house 500 miles away from me with so much detail that I could almost smell the blooms.  He grows all the daylilies I have hybridized myself, and they have brought some focus and purpose into his life after a medically-forced retirement and for that, I am eternally grateful and so very proud of him.

Mostly, I want to remember the laughter and tears shared in the garden this year.  I have to believe the laughter and tears feed the garden just as much as the water and the fertilizer does.

It's all worth it.  Dig in.

Day Seven of Ten: My Favorite Blooms of 2010

For Day Seven, I'm adding H. 'Spacecoast Brazen Bandit' and H. 'Wild and Wonderful.'

These two daylilies make the list for their ability to withstand both extremes of summer - rain and sun. 

I won H. 'Spacecoast Brazen Bandit' during an auction after a presentation from John Kinnebrew, Jr. - the hybridizer of this daylily seen on the left.  I planted it in spring of 2009 and it did not bloom that summer, but OH MY did it make up for it this summer.  John Jr sent four fans to me and this summer it is six fans and all six put up scapes.  The scapes were taller than its registration and the blooms were more beautiful than anticipated.  I love it.


The second pick for today is H. 'Wild and Wonderful.'  I first saw this one win Best In Show at an exhibition show in southern Illinois several years ago.  Maybe I'll try to find a photo I took of that exhibit that day.  It was stunning and I still remember it today.  This flower displays a VERY waxy green throat punctuated with a deep raspberry eyezone on both the petals and the sepals.  The eyezone is a clear color, not muddy in the least.  I show it in the photo below next to Curt Hanson's Stout Silver Medal winning H. 'Primal Scream' to show off the red (and not orange) coloring of the eye.  Sometimes it's not so apparent how clear or how vivid a color is without a comparison, so there it is below!  It did grow a little shorter than registered this year, and I'm not sure why, but it was still a favorite for its consistent coloring.

I also added H. 'Wild and Wonderful' for those who have claimed I have a bias against unusual forms and/or spider daylilies. I do like those forms of daylilies, too, just not as much as I love the more formal, full-formed daylilies. (Don't hate me because I like "bagels.")

Go back and Read DAY SIX in this series here. Enjoy!

So far, I have listed the following hemerocallis cultivars for my 2010 favorites:

'Cinderella's Dark Side'   (Apps)

'Tempest in a Tutu'   (Owen, P.)

'Ron Valente'   (Moldovan)

a Bob Faulkner seedling I call the "rainbow firefly"

'Leonard Sauter,'   (Carpenter, J.)

'Raspberry Goosebumps'   (Polston)

'Eyes Right Jones'   (Wilkerson)
'Lee's Loss'   (Gates-Hansen)
'Woman at the Well'   (Emmerich)
'Worthy One'   (Wild)
'Northern Fancy'   (Stamile)
'Butterscotch and Ginger'   (Klehm)
'Spacecoast Brazen Bandit'   (Kinnebrew, J.)
'Wild and Wonderful'   (Stamile)

Daylily Haiku Thursday | Day Six of Ten: My Favorite Blooms of 2010

try to find the way

to stop summers spinning clock

celebrate the day

   

H. 'Northern Fancy' is a pick for my favorites list this year.  It is one of the "edgiest" daylilies in my collection.  Here are three photos of it, and I have at least 20 more to show off how photogenic it was.  I saw it in Florida in the hybridizers garden two years ago and immediately ordered it when I got home.  It does great here in Michigan and shows off that edge time and again.

I love a good self.  H. 'Butterscotch and Ginger' from Klehm is most likely the most perfect self I grow.  The term self refers to the coloration of the flower, and that it is basically all one color.  Most daylilies have a complementary throat, or a contrasting eye, or a coordinating edge and eye, but selfs are absent of these color delineations.  It's all one, smooth canvas of a single color.  In this case it is a luscious combination of butterscotch and ginger (good thing, because that's its name...)

I had to show you three photos of each.  You're lucky I didn't show 20 of each.  I love these two daylilies.  I hope you do, too.

Go back and Read DAY FIVE in this series here. Enjoy!

So far, I have listed the following hemerocallis cultivars for my 2010 favorites:

'Cinderella's Dark Side'

'Tempest in a Tutu'

'Ron Valente'

a Bob Faulkner seedling I call the "rainbow firefly"

'Leonard Sauter,'

'Raspberry Goosebumps'

'Eyes Right Jones'
'Lee's Loss'
'Woman at the Well'
'Worthy One'
'Northern Fancy'
'Butterscotch and Ginger'

Ida Munson Candidates... | Please vote your Garden Judge ballots!

Each year AHS members who choose to become Garden Judges are allowed to vote on most of the major cultivar awards that are given out each year.  One of these awards is the Ida Munson Award, given to an outstanding double.  Of the 23 nominated cultivars, I have nine.  Here are my photos of those nine candidates (and my top picks) for the Ida Munson Award.  There are some awesome cultivars competing this year for this award...it will be hard to choose a winner.

Which one would you vote for?

 

H. 'Honey Crunch Cupcake' and H. 'Margaret Tucker'

H. 'Amanda's Little Red Shoes' and H. 'Topguns Anita Causey'

H. 'Douglas Debate'

 
H. 'Rose Storn' and H. 'Royal Corsage'

H. 'Firefly Frenzy' and H.'Two to Tango'

There are many things to consider when voting for a winner- plant habit, bloom length, garden value - not just the pretty face.  Remember the criteria from your judges training and if you need a refresher, please re-read the appropriate sections of your handbook before voting.

If you are an AHS Garden Judge, your ballots are due by September 1st.  If you've lost your ballot or would like to download the judges handbook for free, you can do so here.  Even if you aren't a Garden Judge, you can click on that link to see what the ballot looks like, and what other cultivars are eligible for the different awards!

Your vote counts...please send in your ballots.

Day Five of Ten: My Favorite Blooms of 2010

Here is Day Five of my Ten Day Series on my favorite blooms of 2010.  Today, I'm focusing on the sublime silence of some daylilies.  These daylilies are graced with color that speaks volumes - on both ends of the spectrum.

H. 'Lee's Loss' is a delight. It has several qualities that I consider to be very attractive in a daylily bloom.

It has symmetry and grace, as well as balance of color.  It also has two wonderful focal points- a unique throat pattern/pleat and an ornate ruffle.  I like when daylilies have a focal point.  Sometimes its a striking eyezone, other times it may be a screaming green throat, but it is an outstanding characteristic of some sort.  This one was a favorite for me because I could always count on a very formal, very feminine, very perfect flower each time it was in bloom.

These next two really make me smile.  On the left, is the very distinctly formed H. 'Woman at the Well.'  I love the color combination and those swollen midribs.  On the right is H. 'Worthy One,' which not only was my favorite double this year, it also wins the award for most prolific.  I planted five fans last fall and there are 16 now.  It's a little scary how fast it multiplied - like Little Shop of Horrors scary.  The color is so grape and so sunfast.  These dark blooms held up to sun and rain wonderfully.

Go back and Read DAY FOUR in this series here. Enjoy!

So far, I have listed the following hemerocallis cultivars for my 2010 favorites:

'Cinderella's Dark Side'

'Tempest in a Tutu'

'Ron Valente'

a Bob Faulkner seedling I call the "rainbow firefly"

'Leonard Sauter,'

'Raspberry Goosebumps'

'Eyes Right Jones'
'Lee's Loss'
'Woman at the Well'
'Worthy One'

                                               
 
 

Daylily Haiku Thursday | Summer Heat Relief

hot, thick air pushes

down on my wild, green spirit ~

lazy, lazy days.

Here is a rainbow of color to enjoy in this suffocating, oppressive heat.  The rain and saturated color on these blooms refresh my parched skin.

Clockwise from top left are: H. 'Spanish Fiesta,' H. ' Asian Fairy Bluebird,' H. 'Spacecoast Ojo Rojo,' and H.' Born To Run.'