Daylily Haiku Thursday | Just being...

be in the moment,

soak up the morsels of life-

smiling all the way!

Every day I write posts in my brain, or have an experience that I think would make a great blog post, but they just don't make it here.  And that's because I'm busy exploring, engaging, experimenting, baking, laughing, planting, working, creating, mothering, living and best of all, being just being me...finding my laugh again. 

Daylily season is taking off here in Michigan - finally!  About six or seven daylilies are blooming now, and last night I deadheaded in my own garden for the first time in 2011!  WOW!

We traveled to my parents house last weekend in southern Illinois, where my seedlings are growing beautifully.  I had so much fun discovering daylilies I had forgotten since last summer and seeing new ones for the first time.  Five of my favorites are shown here.  The first one up there on the left is from MOMENTUM X BITTERSWEET HOLIDAY.  It will certainly be introduced soon.  Bud count was at least 24 on each scape and it grows 32" tall.  I divided a clump of 36 fans into smaller divisions last fall to see how it made it through the winter after being divided and it passed the test with flying colors.  The smaller divisions could even use dividing now!  It is so prolific!  I really enjoy the very pronounced stippled sepals, too.  The color dilutes as the summer day matures, much like the ice in a glass of whiskey mellows out the color in the sweating glass.  This one is named in the garden "Another Shot of Whiskey" and I'm sure that name will stick if it ever gets registered.  I am growing this one in Michigan, too, so I can see how it does in our winters.  The scapes here are still weeks away from blooming.  Seems to be about 3 weeks behind the divisions in southern Illinois.

Three of the crosses below involve H. 'Sabine Baur,' one of my all-time favorite eyed and edged daylily.  The top two below are from that cross and the one on the bottom right is, too.  Some very diverse children coming from that daylily!  The daylily on the bottom left is not from h. 'Sabine Baur' but is one of my favorite dream crosses ever made, and that was GRAND OLD FLAG X GOLDEN TENTACLES.  That flower is 9"!  The edge is ruffled and toothy, and it is a creamy, dreamy mix tropical colors.

The seedling shown on the right above measured 9.5" and really showed its stuff as the day went on.  It was gargantuan.  Here is a close up:

I noticed a funny thing happening with my seedlings, too.  Bi-colors (of any sort) and red daylilies are not two types that tend to like, and yet I saw five red and two bi-color seedlings that were stunners in my own crop.  How in the world does a person who doesnt like red daylilies get five red seedlings that she loves?  Seriously, those five really caught my eye and I actually am thinking about introducing some, but I know I will never live it down if I put out a red - seeing as I have soapboxed about my red-aversion many times before.  I'm almost embarrassed to admit I like them so much.  I'll show you those later to see what you think. 

Who would of thunk it?!

ON ANOTHER NOTE:  If you dont have any plans for the weekend of July 15, you should plan to come to Michigan for a major daylily event.  All are welcome to attend the bus tours of 8 area gardens, enjoy 5 catered meals and partake in all the fun!  Full details can be found at the Great Lakes Gathering website.  There are still 22 spots left - but I am sure they will go fast.  You can pay your registration fee with PayPal on this website and get your spot reserved.  Gift plants abound for guests, and garden shopping opportunities are amazing!  Go to the website above to get a registration form and get your questions answered.  I hope to see you there.

I'm headed to Northern Mecca (google it) on Saturday to enjoy some fellowship and see how southern Ohio is doing daylilies.  I plan to be at River Bend Gardens, also the home of Pretty Petals, all day soaking up the sun and fun in the fields.

Another season is here.  I am so happy to be a part of it!

Daylily Haiku Thursday | My pink heart...

bare toes in the dirt

soft blades of grass at my feet

the season is here!

Here is H. 'Pink Super Spider', which is not actually registered as a spider at all, but a glorious, 10" unusual form.  It was registered in 1982, by a trailblazer named Kate Carpenter.

This pink has a "white base" which clarifies and exemplifies the color.  The yellow is clear, the pink is clear and the overall presence is wonderful.  It is registered at 32", but grows to almost 40" here in Michigan. 

Looking at the progeny of this daylily on the AHS databse, only 14 other daylilies have been bred from this  one, and that is a much smaller number than I would have guessed.  It is a diploid, and I happen to think that a complex pattern would be a home run on a daylily with this clarity and consistent form.  Paul Owen's H. 'Faber Sabre' is a very beautiful offspring from H. 'Pink Super Spider.'  I have a few patterned, diploid seedlings from other hybridizers that I will certainly be considering this summer as mates for H. 'Pink Super Spider.'  Below is Jamie Gossard's H. 'Neon Pink Flamingo' (which I am still trying to find to add to my garden...)  I love this big pinkie, too.

There are no blooming daylilies in my Michigan garden right now, but this weekend my eyes will be filled with them in my parents yard in southern Illinois.  As you might remember, all my own seedlings are growing there, and they are at peak bloom right now.  The raised beds are "on fire" to quote my dad, who still enjoys tending to the daylily babies.  Ill be sure to post pics of the most promising seedlings when I get back in town next week.

I am floating "on the surface" of many wonderful facets of my life right now - my son's first real Summer Vacation from school, exciting family changes and one of my most anticipated daylily seasons ever. Some of my PTA-mom compatriots would not understand how my garden ranks next to my son's social life at the country club, but it's true. It does and I know it makes me a better mother to enjoy my own growth as much as I enjoy my son's. 

Our family garden brings us all closer together, evidenced by last nights scavenger hunt in the garden to identify the miniature hosta we grow that appear in the book "Little Hostas" by daylilians and global hosta experts, Kathy Guest Shadrack and Michael Shadrack.  If you haven't bought a garden book yet this year, do your bookshelf a favor and pick this one up.  Carter enjoyed finding the names of the little hosta in the book and then hunting around the yard to find the matching plant tag in our own garden.  He was amazed we grew something he found in a book - a magical gift of wonder I wish more of us had later in life.

Stay connected, everyone.  Stay connected to whatever reminds you that you were once full of unabashed wonder, magic and promise.  You're still that person!

Daylily Haiku Thursday | A "hot" confession...

the morning sun- it bled

in shades of pink, orange and red.

i blinked.  it was gone.

I know RED is considered the "glue" that keeps all the other colors in the garden palette together, and I understand the 3:1 cool-to-hot color design rule very well, but red makes my wandering eye vibrate.  I find it takes on hues, shades and tones of the colors around it - quite often making the red muddy, dull, and kind of ugly.  I cannot blame you for disagreeing with me, nor can I help my dislike for the most popular color in the Crayola box.  I've tried.  Really, I have.

A lot of gardeners prefer red geraniums and zinnias and petunias.  A lot of gardeners also prefer concrete geese that they can dress is seasonal outfits.  Some people might prefer a sharp poke in the eye, too.  Totally their choice.    That's the beauty of gardening...there's room for all tastes - or lack thereof.

To my credit, I've surmounted my aversion by overusing every other color in the rainbow in my garden.  I love shades of pink daylilies dancing around an explosion of purple sage.  Bright yellows punctuating a drift of orange and white kind of makes my mouth water with subtle, but colorful awesomeness.  Purples and lavenders love the company of silvery-green artemisias at their feet and bright chartreuse's are used everywhere in my garden as consistent accents in the form of coleus, creeping jenny, sweet potato vines and ferns. 

My garden beds are an obnoxiously organized carnival of color and I don't mind being the ringmaster.

 

Come to think of it, I don't wear red clothes much, have never owned a red car and the red crayon in my box of 64 is always sharp from no use.  (Yes, I do keep a box of crayons for myself.  Don't you?)

This daylily is H. 'Matchless Fire' and is a very distinctive daylily and one of the few red ones that grow in my yard.  Michigan hybridizer Greg Schindler introduced this one and I promote it every chance I get because I think it is so incredibly distinctive.  The white edges get thicker as the evening matures and it has the best foliage in the garden every year.  I have never seen another daylily with an orange watermark like this one - and it just spills out onto the petals as the day goes on.  I'd love to see what some patterns would do on this one...I think there are some great possibilities with color in there- even if it is red.

In the end, color is a weapon in the garden.  One that you should wield with reckless abandon in whatever way soothes your green gardening heart.  Organize by the color wheel if you must, but try to pair those colors directly across from one another.  Use the opposites and relish the results.  The nurseries will not cancel your catalog subscriptions and you will not be exiled from your garden club if your window boxes are not the appropriate color ratio of cool to warm.  And if they do kick you out, well, good for you. 

A daylily ambassador extraordinaire! | Clarence Crochet

For those who were not in Baton Rouge to hear Mr. Clarence Crochet accept the 2010 Moldovan Mentoring Award, here it is!  I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.  Thank you, Mr. C., for almost five decades of daylily service.  You are very much appreciated and your efforts have not gone unnoticed.

It was an absolute honor to present this award to him.  If anyone has pictures of he and I exchanging the award as he approached the podium, please send it on!

Bench at Goudeaus and Beached Bus | Daylily Blog on Tour!

PROJECT I MUST ADD TO MY OWN GARDEN: I took several pictures of a double-wide (and easy to make) bench at the Goudeaus. This is the that made for a very comfortable respite. It was about 30" wide, so several tired bottoms could rest on one seat and not feel like they were in a garden club prison line-up.  These benches were all over the garden.  The benches were wide, the swings were extra long and extra wide and they were everywhere, too.  

15 minutes before our bus driver completely beached our bus and stranded us in the garden, I was relaxing on this very bench, constructing it in my own garden.  The next thing I remember is us boarding the bus and taking off for the Pressler Garden when we came to a screeching halt.  We were beached.  And tipping.  DEBOARD!  DEBOARD!  We quickly evacuated the bus and headed back to the beautiful garden.  Here is our bus stranded across Blackwater Road.

Why, yes, thanks for asking.  That is our bus' drivers side front tire completely off the ground.  It turns out it is difficult to drive when this happens.  Who knew?  Nine other buses on the tour took the corner just fine apparently...we must have had a problem with our weight distribution.

What a treat to get more time there! Two state troopers, three wreckers and one very interesting tow truck driver later (seen below), we were headed back to the hotel with our good moods intact.

It IS all good in Baton Rouge.