Shirley D

We are deep into daylily season now, and I am seeing patterns regarding daylily crosses that will work this year. For instance, the cross that made the Mahala Felton dedication daylily will not have a repeat seed creation season this particular year. One of the parent daylilies is not sending up scapes right now. That happens. It is a healthy daylily, not crowded. It could be that I just overworked it last year. For this year, the Mahala Felton daylily seedlings are doing well and will start to be be planted this fall in various locations in the Oakwood Cemetery garden where Mahala Felton is interred.

I am also having challenges this year with getting the Molly Cowles dedication daylily cross to replicate. 60 seeds last year, and not a single success with that same cross this year. But that, too, is OK. I have so many Molly Cowles seedlings that some will probably even go up north. I will continue to try to replicate those crosses this year. There is still lots of runway ahead. And some things happen for a reason.

Those daylily seedlings are wonderful, and I hope they will bloom absolutely beautifully, but I knew there was more to come. It was forming in my mind. Something a bit different.

We were “getting there” when one of the daylilies I purchased and planted at Oakwood last fall began to bloom a few weeks ago. That daylily’s name is Red Volunteer.

“Volunteer” has layers of meaning. What a cool daylily to be at Oakwood. And it is stunning. I am hoping for way more blooms next year. I only caught two this year.

But something was still in my mind. It just was still in a “waiting” state. Something with ties to meaning. It finally arrived.

Dedication daylily “Shirley D” is a dedication to my good friend, long time historian and author, and fellow volunteer at Oakwood Cemetery. Shirley puts up with my relentless garden talk, endlessly long texts, and ridiculously ambitious ideas. And Shirley and her husband Mike dedicate uncounted hours of personal labor as well as their substantial leadership to Oakwood Cemetery. They are, in my humble opinion, the primary reason Oakwood Cemetery is in the renovated state it is in today.

Dedication daylily “Shirley D” is from 2022 harvested seed. 2022 was a tough year for me. It was the year my husband and I decided that the little home up in the mining town in northern Minnesota (that we had renovated and planned as our retirement home) was not truly a match. Our plans were upended. We were back to the townhome plan, and I was gutted. I wanted a yard to renovate into a garden. I wanted to be in that area. But it was just too small. My friend Shirley was a dear sweet comfort as I greatly grieved selling that house.

The following year, as I was looking for something I could pour myself into through gardening, Shirley, once again, reminded me of opportunities at our local historical society. While dedication daylily “Shirley Dalaska” was slowly putting roots down where I had planted her the previous fall, I joined the historical society, intending to mainly garden. I took a meandering route, but eventually I found my way (back) over to Oakwood, where I, once again, saw the old, abandoned garden I had seen before. Volunteers are not in plentiful supply, and no one had felt both a calling and the time to address it. And honestly, I too had no interest in that garden. The goats that had been at Oakwood to eat the buckthorn a few years before might have enjoyed it had they had access to it, but it did not really speak to me at all. I was looking at the huge expanse of a raised bed fence garden that so needed love. The old, abandoned garden had stuff that would look great in the fence garden, but the fence garden needed way more than weeding and transplants. What happened next is a testament to Shirley’s absolute genious. While I was working through what I was feeling called to do, Shirley didn’t give me her plan. She let me come up with a “Susan plan”. An impossibly ambitious plan to move the heaving rock and exposed plastic out and go to a mulched garden. I went to the store, bought three bags of mulch, put some in, took a picture and asked what she thought, and pretty soon Shirley and Mike were there doing garden days, sometimes even when I wasn’t there – moving rock, pouring out bags of mulch, putting up with my insistence that hostas would never survive there and that people who were increasingly plopping hosta donations in the newly renovated garden were going to be sorely disappointed when their hostas died. It was, after all, I said, a full sun garden, for goodness sakes 🙂 (Those hostas are thriving – lol) Shirley has stood beside me, even talked me out of really bad ideas, and still encouraged me in my efforts. She soooo gets me. She gets my intensity. She gets that I primarily want to make gardens. She gets that I am so pleased seeing the community appreciate the completed renovation. (Is a garden ever truly completed though? I don’t think so.) Shirley gets that I was pretty driven about getting the garden renovated but now am thrilled that I only need 1 hour per week to weed it because neighbors are weeding as they walk by. So cool!!! And she puts up with me saying, for the 900th time, that I am not going there every day to water plopped plants, which still happens lol. It’s OK, she says. Shirley really is a saint. I think she may be watering plops. I’m pretty sure she is 😉

This year, as the daylilies in my townhouse gardens started to come up and then show scapes and buds, dedication daylily “Shirley D” took her sweet time. Other South Seas self-seed creations were coming up, making it onto my blogs. Still created by our mutual neighborhood pollinators but looking “not Shirley”. And then the first bloom. Does “Shirley D” not have the “it” factor? Understated, yet undeniable presence. Like Shirley D the person, my dear friend.

Among Shirley’s many contributions, Shirley does stained glass work.

Back at you, my friend, with another floral beauty.