Making a List...checking it twice! | Daylily Blog about List Making

Its been one hot mess of a week with a cough that wont go away, an extremely successful elementary school book fair that has eaten more of my life than I will admit to, a new puppy, a growing (and challenging) seven year old and a pending weekend of travel.  When I can slow down enough to wrap my own hands around my own neck, I will surely choke myself for another overbooked week.  But, to be fabulous, you have to lose some sleep. AND you have to be a neurotic great list-maker.  

Daylily collecting comes with many opportunities to make lists.  Lists of what plants you own, which plants you used to own, which plants you are buying, which plants you WISH you could buy, which plants are dormant, which plants are rust-resistant, and which plants you want to sell.

I made a big list of "Plants I Want To Sell" this summer and used that list for the Central Illinois Daylily Society's Summer Plant Sale.  This sale has two facets, one for the club to sell donated plants to make 100% profit, and another where individual sellers can set up their own booths to sell plants.  The sellers share 30% of their sales with the club and everyone goes home happy.  I had a booth at this sale and wanted to generate some cash to help pay for the soon-to-happen front yard boulderscape plan.  So, I needed to sell a ton of plants.

In the first picture above, that is the view from my booth.  The Washington Park Botanical Garden was a great setting for this sale.  All those tables above are color-coded, which means the plants on the table roughly matched the color of the tablecloth and balloon. Great organization.

Above is another booth, manned by Coates Daylilies.  She had her double fans clearly marked and had a master board of all the photos of the daylilies.  I picked up six fans of H. 'Moroccan Sapphire' from her at this sale.  I've wanted that one for a long time and I couldn't resist buying it from her for $5 per double fan!

Here is my booth below.  I did not bag the daylilies (wasteful of time and resources, IMHO) and showed off the healthy, thick roots to my customers.  Another seller remarked to me as I was setting up - "Wow, I don't think I've ever seen anyone just plop the daylilies right on the table before."

  

Well, leave it to me to do something no one has ever seen.  I would argue the bag tied/taped around the roots creates a hot house of moisture and a great opportunity for rot to occur, but Im not going to open that can of worms.  No one complained, I sold out of all but a few, and left a happy camper.  I used my own photos on the picture board and had everything clearly marked with a price.  I had some for $5 and others for $30 and even two that were $50- just in case a daylily gourmet happen to sashay by looking for a must-have.  And indeed, they did!

Here are more happy shoppers, making more lists of plants they need to add to their collections.  I even had someone drive almost 2 hours to buy plants from me.  She is an avid follower of this blog and it was great to put a face to an email.    Thats what this blog is about.  Starting a conversation.  This blog, and these plants sure give me the opportunity to meet some awesome folks who brighten my life with their stories.  I am very grateful for the connections.

If you are in the market for a computer program that will help you track your garden plants, sales, income, make plant labels, plan crosses, track parentage, store photos, publish a website,  generate a catalog and much more, you should be using PlantStep.  Visit this link to learn more.  You can buy it online, upgrades are always included and the technical support is awesome.  Its easy data entry, and you could be up and running with a great daylily database before you know it this winter.  Check it out here.  Good demonstrations of the program are there, too.  I love its label printing feature, and I love its easy catalog generation capabilities.  I have no stake in the company and am not being compensated in any way for my mention.  Its just my customer testimonial for my friends.  This program helps me manage my busy life by making "list-making" easy and fun.  

Im currently checking out an application called BENTO for my iPhone.  (google it) A friend recently showed me what it can do for daylilies and I was impressed.  He created a cool database for his iPhone that allows him to store his collection (with pictures) in an easy-to-scroll-through catalog on his phone.  I need that.  More lists. 

Anyhoo, the CIDS folks meet in Springfield, Illinois and they would love to have you at their next meeting.  If you are looking for a local club to join and learn more about daylilies, check out this link here.