This morning I am thinking about all the things I am thankful for. Deeply thankful. With as much of a “spirit, but in a human body” understanding of exactly how Faithful God is.
Underpinning everything is always my faith, and my trust in the Triune God, and my salvation from eternal separation from God. That only Jesus could provide – and did. No way would I want to do life without that.
And there are so many things – provisions, answered prayers. Not always in the way we wanted, but with faith that He’s got us. In tiny little things as well as monumental. Consider the lilies. Matthew 6: 28-30
In the garden, specifically this week, I am thankful that the sprinklers are fixed. It is novel, and nostalgic to haul out the hose, but so much nicer to walk out in the morning and see the water on the ground, and the gardens.
I am thankful the new plantings are doing well. Those 20+ year old hollyhock seeds that, amazingly, went to seedling are enjoying their new home. I am excited to see what they bring to Sandy’s Corner.
I am thankful the squirrels and bunnies are leaving the shamrocks alone.
I am thankful for the bloom of the beautiful Weigelia, and how that 23-year-old has rebounded.
I am thankful for this time of year, and for time and energy to play in the various gardens, and for the physical and mental challenges the various gardens bring. It keeps me researching and documenting and analyzing … and writing.
And I am thankful for the time to just enjoy the gardens, at the townhome and at the historic cemetery. The birds, bees, butterflies, the very squirrely squirrels, and the human and canine visitors, in person and online. Wonderful!
It was a relaxing morning in the garden. Time to sit in the sun a bit, and then the shade when it started to get warmer. Just taking it all in and then doing a little putzing.
The shamrocks needed to get out to their summer spot under the Linden. Then they got a good watering and some pruning. The sprinklers will water them now until they come back inside in October.
And although we are still in a sea of green for the daylilies, we have our first daylily scape of the year.
First scape of the year – Hello Yellow claims the honor
True to schedule, it is on Hello Yellow. Hello Yellow is one of my seedlings, so that is always extra special. This will be the third year of bloom, but we still have a few weeks to go for that. Here’s a pic from last year.
Unfortunately Hello Yellow does not seem to want to produce viable seed. (Last year’s seed looked ok, but it did not go to seedling this spring.) It is however, very pretty, and a keeper. I will post pictures again this year when it blooms.
And the list for fall moves has begun. This Asian lily (in the middle left) blooms peach. It should begin to bloom in a couple weeks. I noticed, however, that it is tall enough this year to be directly in the sprinkler line. Time to find it a new home, this fall. I think I know the place. It would probably look nice filling out the corner, right by a certain frog on a swing.
And I noticed this morning that we have another new daylily cross that went to seedling. That makes 13 new varieties this year. I’m guessing that is small potatoes for many propagators, but that is the most I have ever had in a spring. It was a lot of work, and I am still in the middle, but I am definitely thankful and very happy.
Rain is coming, starting tomorrow. Between the rain and the June heat things will start to pop color very soon.
This year I have posted mostly about Sandy’s Corner, but there is an entirely separate garden I show blooms from, yet hardly ever post the full garden. I like that garden just as much, and it has a history just like Sandy’s Corner, but nowadays it is as much of a working garden as something with pretties in it. That garden has a lot our tried and true, purchased daylilies, a very nice sedum, a very nice hosta, some clematis, some asian lilies, some forget-me-nots, and a corner of daylilies I grew from harvested seed. There is a boatload of history in that garden, tons of fun and funny stories, and, when I look at in real life, I, as a gardener, zoom in on the individual beauty, plant by plant.
But in pictures … yah. Time for a little optimization.
That garden is exactly perfect for daylilies. It gets sun for a long portion of the day. But that area is also a bit … rough. I actually have thought about requesting to put mulch outside the border, between the pine and the pavers, because it has pine tree roots. But meh, I don’t want to replace that mulch each year.
Like Sandy’s Corner, that area has gone through multiple iterations. At one time it was half sedum. One of our previous dogs, a very precocious Irish Terrier mix, REALLY did not like bees, and would lunge at the sedum out front in the fall, breaking off pieces. Well, of course I rooted those pieces, and when they were ready to be planted, I went about it. In those days I was lining and swooping lots of multiples in the landscape, and that’s what I did with all those sedum rootings. They started out itty bitty, grew to just right, and then all of a sudden, they were huge. I kept one in place, donated a few, and relocated the rest into our other garden areas.
That area also had a trial period as a berry bush spot (failed), and for over a decade it had quite a number of tulips followed by hostas. That was in the Hostaville days. Those poor hostas. Way too much sun. And the tulips are just memories.
Eventually that garden rounded the corner to be primarily a daylily garden. As I got more and more into daylilies, and started ordering from the source I currently use, I plopped them in in the fall and waited to see what did well over successive years. I did take some care to place them for size (tall to the back) and bloom time (for appeal), and they were very definitely pretty. So pretty I ended up wanting to use some of those daylilies for crosses. Including some of the ones to the back haha! Playing hopscotch was kind of humorous in those days, but now that I know which ones I use, I want to make those more convenient.
So here we go. Seedling planting first.
The 2025 crosses that went to seed and then went to seedling this spring are doing way better than I remember in previous years, as far as growth, and they are starting to get ready to be planted. This has kind of caught me off guard, as I usually plant seedlings in the late summer/early fall when I do divisions, transplants, and additions. But I have space for seedlings in that garden, and I can start what I have been meaning to do – make “family” plantings. Planting seedlings close to their parents – or at least their pod parent.
The backdrop is already there
Unlike Sandy’s corner, I already have a long-time established backdrop to that garden. Way back when I first started the gardens I put in clematis on trellises. It was a bit of a learning curve there, too, as I put a huge trellis by the AC and learned what AC venting up high does to clematises. (It blows them apart 😥) I donated that huge trellis to a friend, along with blooming cactuses he also thought were cool (and I wanted out), and I went much smaller. Then came the day when we had two things happen at once – we replaced the AC and furnace, and we bought a very small house way up in a little mining town on the north shore (Lake Superior). We thought we would retire up there, and I was building out my gardens. Well, I dug out that beautiful deep pink clematis and pulled out those shorter trellises and brought them up to that little house and planted them there. (They took 😊) But I didn’t get it all, and a little bit remains and blooms each year, even despite a previous lawn maintenance service thinking it was a weed and yanking out what was above ground. Oh yah. The stories! Anyway – that remnant of a clematis comes back each year. Sometimes more than others. This year we only have one bloom on that clematis. It is pictured above. I am hoping that clematis remains, but we shall see.
The other clematises also have a story. When they bloom, I will share those.
And those pots on the path? They are planted daylily seeds harvested from the historic cemetery. The small pot has seedlings harvested from what I call a “plop”. As in donation including planting, with no further information. I don’t know what they are, but they are very pretty in bloom, and they had self-seed, so I harvested it. It worked, but now I have a dilemna – seedlings do very poorly in the historic cemetery gardens so … they are living here for now, until they get big enough to be obviously a daylily. The larger pot is full of Stella De Oro self-seed and … they are not going to seedling. The dirt will eventually be spread out under the pine tree.
Then in the front open space is the failed Schnickel Fritz daylily. Long live Schnickel Fritz. And the small grey planter is my seedling planter with some townhome cross seeds that aren’t germinating yet. Soon they will go up north to give those seeds one final chance to germinate in the wild. Probably not, but you never know.
The wooden seedling box stays. Another story for another day, but the kids made it for me for a milestone birthday, and my husband lovingly made repairs to it this spring.
And that is the garden I hardly ever show as a full garden. Soon to be optimized and then be named. I’m mulling that over. I’m thinking something like Worker Bee – tongue in cheek to honor our Irish Terrier, who did not love bees, took many bites to the mouth to try and remove them, and who could not understand why I would entice more lol.
Today the seedling box with my grand experiment got emptied out. The one where I planted one seed per tiny pot in 6 pk trays. Little squirrel did try to start the emptying job ahead of me, but those efforts were unsuccessful, thank goodness.
Out of the 48 daylily seeds I planted in those little pots, one did germinate and went to seedling. I thought it might be the cross, but a few days ago the other seeds of that same cross that I planted my normal way – multiple seeds per larger pot – started to germinate. They were planted a month later and went outside later as well. So, the little 6 pk seedling trays are definitely out, and I chalk it up to experience and move on.
Under the cloche (wire protective basket) in the picture below are the contents of the grand experiment – the one daylily seedling and then a couple of what I think are the Malva Zebrina Hollyhocks I have mentioned in previous posts. Maybe the “gift” of those teeny tiny pots is the germination of those 20+ year old hollyhock seeds? Kind of. I do have another of those hollyhock seedlings in a larger pot too, planted at the same time.
Anyway … My heart is so happy to see that daylily seedling in the ground with the two hollyhocks. They look teeny tiny right now, but I know only too well their potential. My guess is that next year that big pot full of shamrocks will not have a home in that location 😉
We are in the middle of a drought AND the sprinkler system here is also in the middle of some repairs. Now, shhhh, but lawns to me are the most beautiful when they are old. Really old. Like a century old is wonderful. I don’t, shhhh, think house yards need to be golf course worthy. That is just me. I know I am probably in a tiny minority with that belief.
But … gardens 🙂 🙂 🙂 They are so worth pulling out the hose. And that is what we did tonight.
It unexpectedly brought back such fond memories, especially times with my Dad, with him pulling out the coiled hose, starting up the water, not even having a fancy sprayer, sometimes just a thumb fanning the water out – until the water got way too cold. Tonight, as our old sprayer hobbled along, definitely needing replacement, I was in memoryville of those times long ago, spraying the gardens, sometimes the yard if it really needed it. And tonight, when I sat down on the patio and looked out over the freshly sprayed garden, I felt like I had brought a little bit of those long-ago times to our gardens here.
The sprinklers here will be fixed. I will probably not get a ton more sessions like tonight. But wow! Was it fun!
The Weigelia is beginning to bloomAnother “Bouquet” with a few of my seedlings – that I hope will bloom this year (in front) and some Forget-me-Nots in betweenWe are growing one “edible” this year – “Basket of Fire” hot peppers. Mainly, they are ornamental 😉These “Snow in Summer” blooms are exceptionally pretty at the historic cemetery this year.
And the icing on the cake – the purple irises are starting to bloom at the historic cemetery.
This is one I transplanted from the old garden
Beyond that, the daylily seedlings are popping up at a pretty good pace now with the warmer weather. We have our first seedlings from crosses with South Seas self-seed daylilies, and we have new crosses from our regular stock, including two new crosses with Red Volunteer.
It is Memorial Day in the United States. It is a dedicated time to remember all the people who have made incredible sacrifices to form and establish and maintain this wonderful republic we call the United States of America. I am so very grateful.
This past week we remembered the anniversary of my Father-in-Law’s passing. A loving husband, father, family member, friend, community member, and World War II veteran. We are so thankful to have had him in our lives. We were truly blessed and our memories with him are a treasure.
Memorial Day weekend also kicks off the “unofficial start of summer”, and we take time to enjoy gatherings and relationships. We can accomplish all the things in the world, but there also needs to be rest and fellowship. Those times form sweet, sweet memories.
And, as it falls, a couple days ago it was also time to renew my blog domain for another year. I am officially in year 9 of this blog. But full transparency, I almost let the blog go. It isn’t that there is nothing to write about. The garden is absolutely beautiful. It is living its best life and doing a wonderful job of providing all sorts of beautiful moments and opportunities. And it is a place for many types of moments – moments to rest and moments to challenge myself and moments to contribute. It’s just that I have been in the rest and enjoyment moments so much that I haven’t gotten back into a good (contributing) pattern of posting again. I take the pics, I consider what would be fun to share, and then I relax and think “I’ll post tomorrow” 😉
For historical reflection, I am recognizing I truly am at what could be called “Someday When”. So much of where I wanted to go with the gardens is now here. I am enjoying it more and more and adjusting it less and less. And yet, there is always room for “one more” when circumstances provide. As some 20-year-old seeds recently taught me.
This winter I decided it was time to see if the 20+ year old Malva Zebrina Hollyhock seeds I had harvested from my gardens at our first house would grow. I planted those seeds indoors in a pot and watered them, and they did nothing. I thought I had my answer. But, as I often interject into posts that daylily propagation from seed is a long game, so appears to be the journey of at least a few of those Malva Zebrina Hollyhock seeds. It appears they were still viable. They were just needing more time to show up for the 2026 garden. But, thinking the seeds were not viable after all those years, when I began to plant my 2025 harvested daylily seeds, I took the dirt from the pot I planted the Malva Zebrina Hollyhock seeds in and used it in planting the daylily seeds. Fast forward two months, the daylily seeds are emerging, albeit slowly. And along with them, some “familiar looking” seedlings have also been showing up in those trays and pots. They are definitely not daylily seedlings, but since they were so familiar looking, I decided to leave them in place and see what happened. I may be mistaken, but I am thinking they are Malva Zebrina Hollyhock seedlings. Time will certainly tell, but I am thinking they are from that 20+-year-old seed!
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And I realize those seedlings are a garden bridge from the house where I started my own gardens, to today. If they survive, they will have a chance to grow at the back of Sandy’s corner, a backdrop to the 35+ year story of my gardening experience. All these years later, a story of different eras, still thriving. I hope the hollyhocks do well. That would be super fun!
And it brings back so many memories! A few days after we closed on our first house, my Mother-in-Law and Father-in-Law came with buckets of irises, dug from their garden. They knew how much I loved their gardens. They were sharing. We kneeled down in the dirt on the west side of the house and planted 40 irises together. Three years later when it was time to divide them there were hundreds! Those irises were gorgeous!
And I remember the first seed catalogues that arrived after we bought our first house. My husband teased me as I spouted off scientific names I was learning from poring over gardening catalogues so much. But it wasn’t just that. Those catalogues that came in the mail were so enticing. I imagined beautifully lush gardens coming out of tiny seed packets. It all looked so wonderful. And so, I bought seeds and started growing them. And I began to dig out grass and lay down mulch all around the periphery of our back yard, much to the chagrin of my husband who thought the sod we had laid was the final frontier. Oh, I sooo remember the aching muscles from laying that sod! And I sooo remember the aching muscles from tearing out that sod, too 😉 Anyway, I planted layers with shrubs at the back of the beautiful gardens I was imagining, and I planted tiers coming forward from that. Seeds, bulbs, tubers, wild roses. And some food. But mostly perennials. And every morning, sometimes at 5 am, I walked our black lab around the gardens, discovering what the new day had brought. Wonderful!
Then one year I stumbled on hostas. My love of hostas started very innocently, from bringing home (“saving”) a few discarded corms my Dad was sweeping up off the driveway after we did some dividing and transplanting. My husband doubted they would grow. They were teeny, tiny. But oh! did they ever take off! And thus started a long journey in “Hostaville”. Lots of years. Hosta of the year, buying backwards into that collection, in multiples of 3-6, yah. That was fabulous. Many of those hostas are still in my current gardens.
Then I got some daylilies. That, like seeds, was me succumbing to successful garden catalogue marketing. The same company that was successful at getting my seed business from catalogues also featured 1-year daylily seedlings. The pictures got me. I imagined a lush garden full of beautiful blooms. That came, eventually, but it took a while. Quite a while. Nevertheless, over the years, as the daylilies began to fill out, I fell in love with those ‘Purple D’Oro’ daylilies, and then ‘Marque Moon’. I also bought some more bare root varieties, sometimes in big box stores – ‘Autumn Red’ for instance. And I bought some stock from a couple large local garden centers. I was chugging along, adding and removing things as they worked or didn’t work in the gardens, and then it happened.
In retrospect, it was a wisp, a vaper. A wisp, a vapor that became another wonderful memory. Here’s what happened. Our son brought his new girlfriend over to meet us for the first time. Kindred garden spirits, it took us just a few minutes to start chatting everything gardens. I do remember the smiles on my husband and our son’s faces. Yah 😉 Some minutes in, I was saying I needed to deadhead the drying daylily pods. Our son’s girlfriend’s response was, “Don’t throw those seeds out. You know you can make new daylilies from those.” And those few words started the daylily propagation journey I am on today. That very year I harvested my first daylily self-seed and began to try to bring them to seedling. Direct sow led to harvesting and storing and stratifying and various iterations of crosses and planting to eventually get to seedlings and then, very eventually, daylilies. And yes, our son’s then girlfriend is now my daughter-in-law 🙂 We still chat gardens, all the time. Most recently as she realized one of our grandsons was pouring grass seed into the dirt for her flower planter lol. Oh yah 😉 It’s all good 🙂
And 9 years ago, in a bit of a “state”, I started this blog. Our younger son was hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail (from Mexico to Canada) and blogging on that. I was a bit concerned about that adventure, and in an effort to focus my energy positively, I created my own blog, about gardening. And so this blog began, 9 years ago.
So, my craft room is the garden, my plant storage is in the ground or in little envelopes of seed, and my contributing springs from that. Last year I harvested hundreds of daylily seeds, and they are now planted in pots and in various stages of seedling and pending germination. What I hope will be daylily “Hannah Cowles’ needs to be planted soon. There is just one seedling from that cross. Among hundreds of seeds from that cross. VERY unusual for me. But fitting, as Hannah Cowles was the first woman American settler in our lineage, going all the way back to the 1600s. And potential daylily ‘Hannah Cowles’ will be planted right next to two large bunches of what I hope will be daylily ‘Molly Cowles’. Those seedling bunches were new seedlings last year. Molly Cowles was wife to Sgt Asa Cowles, a Patriot in the American Revolutionary War. Asa’s brother Jabez died in a British prison as a Prisoner of War.
And so, the history melds with memories with the gardens through the years now down to our grandchildren.
This year does, however, feel different. Last year was a pivotal year for me. I was setting some new groundwork, and as so often happens, the gardens were a big part of that. I was marching happily, even exuberantly down the daylily crosses path and feeling very creative. An analogy would be going to the crafts store and buying a bunch of very cute embroidery or knitting or crocheting or finger weaving or scrapbooking supplies. Soon it is time to properly store those supplies and organize them so they are ready for use and then it is time to actually get about using them. Actually work about getting the imagined thing to be real. Uh-huh. And that part, realizing I was definitely over my threshold, led to me saying I will only do four planned daylily crosses in 2026. It turned out that 19 varieties of crosses produced so many hundreds of seeds I was just counting the days until it was all done. And truly it is not done even now. I watch every day to see what new seedlings emerge, I document information on my voluminous excel spreadsheet, and soon I will start planting in the ground. But what I truly enjoy is exactly where the gardens are at right now. And though I know that learning and experimenting will always be there, I am enjoying having the “Someday When”. I like the slower pace, the early morning tour around the garden areas. I like relaxing on the patio, watching the veritable plethora of birds and bees and butterflies and dragonflies, and just enjoying the Now.
So right now:
The Weigelia is starting to bloom. That Weigelia looked pretty bad a few years ago. I have been working with it and this year it is looking great.
The pines are budding out.
The Ninebarks are going through their beautiful color morph sequence.
The stonecrop out front looks awesome right now but will soon “donut”. I am sure I will talk myself out of pulling them out again this year lol.
The Elegans hosta that was a tiny rooting from before we lost the 18 hostas last Spring is doing very well.
The Blue Mouse Ears are loving their new locations.
And the Pink Asian lilies are making an unexpected comeback. (Still forming bloom buds. More to come.)
And not just the townhome gardens are doing well.
At the historic cemetery the irises are mid-bloom. The yellow blooms first and then the purple starts. In 2023 they were in an old garden inside the fence and were just begging for a fresh start. I dug some, divided them, and planted them in an area that was grass but had “iris bed” written all over it. They are so fun now! Yes, we definitely did not add any mulch to that section this year. It is plenty full 🙂
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Not everything is roses, though.
In the townhome gardens:
The 7-year-old South Seas self-seed daylily that only bloomed one year (last year) does not seem to want to come up this year. And I had 3 of the total 4 daylily crosses planned with it. Ouch. Only one cross this year? Really? We shall see about that.
The original South Seas daylily clump will need dividing and transplanting this year. It is starting to fail.
The Carpenter’s Choice daylily doesn’t look good to me, and although I had hoped to get self-seed and experiment with ploidy (a parent is a diploid), it may move out. If I am going to work with it, I don’t want fussy.
And, sadly, the stonecrop under the Linden by the pavers have gone the way of the disappearing hostas. They will not be replaced.
And working at the historic cemetery gardens is no different:
Daylily seedlings don’t do well there, and that was a loss of quite a few good seedlings.
Additionally, fall is not a great time to plant bare root purchased daylilies there. Most of them disappeared and it looks like they are not coming back – probably moles.
Today I will go over to the historic cemetery and see if the purple irises are starting to bloom en masse like the yellow irises have been over the past couple weeks. I’ll share next week.
For now, I’ll wrap up.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and if you are in the United States of America, I hope you have time to observe Memorial Day.
I am trying to decide if these are Malva Zebrina Hollyhock seedlings.
That would be an absolute hoot. They would be 20-year-old seeds I had tried to start this winter. Thinking it didn’t work, I reused the soil for starting daylily seeds. The daylilies are starting to very slowly pop up, and along with them, these seedlings.
Susan's Daily Garden 