Daylily Haiku Thursday | Haunting Yellow Memories | a girl and her garden

How to describe this?

Intense. Clean. Glowing and bright.

It's just not yellow!

There are thousands and thousands of yellow daylilies. Tens of thousands of different cultivars list yellow in their descriptions. Many exhibition judges cringe at the sight of yellow in the seedling section, but if they look carefully at the head table selections as a collective, I would bet more times than not they would find a yellow-dominated winner's circle.

To my eye, yellow always advances in front of other colors and mentally stimulates me in a happy, optimistic, and creative way. I guess there is a reason that legal pads are yellow; it helps the brain!

This first daylily is H. 'Self Propelled.' I love the thick substance and green overlay. I think yellow daylilies surely have a place in the garden. Yellow tends to cleanse other surrounding colors, give a punch and light to an otherwise "darker" area, and provide a smile for the passerby. It always grabs my attention!

I added a couple more yellows to my collection this year - "H. 'Planet Claire,' and H. 'Aruba.' That last one has the greenest, waxiest throat I have ever seen. I hope it likes it here in Illinois. This second picture is H. 'Aruba.' I see LOTS of hybridizing possibilities in this one...

The splash of fresh in the center of this daylily gives it the distinction it needs to set it off from other "just yellows."

This picture was taken at Leo Sharp's Brookwood Gardens in the summer of 2009. My friend Nicole and I spent the morning with Leo in his gardens and had some BIG laughs during our visit. We had the pleasure of being alone with Leo in the garden and listening to some of his stories of the past. We watched him hybridize and watched him talk with his field workers. We met some folks we wished we would have never met, and laughed every second during the stalking incident in front of Leo's house (which is NOT where his garden is, by the way.)

My car was filled to the brim with new purchases and gifts when we left that day. Little did I know that it would be the last time we would be able to visit Brookwood Gardens. Things have changed now, but my memories of that trip haunt me. Some scenes that your eyes take in serve as memory bookmarks to another time. This trip was one of those times. Over the years I've visited LOTS of gardens and unfortunately, some of those visits blur together in a swirl of flowers and bus fumes. Others? Well, they stick.