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.