While we wait for Spring to arrive, above is a pic of some of our oldest surviving Asian lilies in the garden. They bloom in June. They are fading each year, and I won’t replace them, but we enjoy what does bloom each year 🙂
The same day I took the pic of the Asian lilies (above), the first daylily of 2025 bloomed – Hello Yellow (below).
Hello Yellow is a mystery. It is from seedlings I planted from seed I harvested from our garden, but it does not match up with my (admittedly rookie at that time) documentation. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought it was a Stella de Oro volunteer, but I planted the seedlings myself, from our harvested seed, and I do not have any Stella de Oros in our townhouse gardens. Additionally, Stella de Oro is a diploid, and, based on how Hello Yellow is typing out with crosses that make pods that go to seed, Hello Yellow is a tetraploid. A very picky tetraploid, only making seed from a cross to one specific type of tetraploid, but failing to make seed from crosses from many diploids. Seed being the delineator. It does make pods from crosses from diploids, and they do well for sometimes quite a while, but eventually the diploid cross pods fail. To my great disappointment I might say, because if they did succeed, I would say Hello Yellow was a one in a million cross between what my rookie documentation said – a cross between a diploid and a tetraploid. But alas! Highly unlikely successful cross. And you can bet I have tried to replicate it. But nope. Hasn’t worked.
Compounding my attempts to resolve the mystery, a bunny and/or a squirrel ate the only Hello Yellow pods that were kind of making it in 2024. But there is hope – I have two seeds from the Hello Yellow crosses. We shall see. And you can bet Hello Yellow will get priority for the few crosses I do in 2026. Already in the plan.
Even if I cannot reproduce Hello Yellow, it will stay in the garden. It is quite unique – it is an extended bloom daylily (blooms in the evening and stays blooming until the next evening), and it is the longest blooming daylily in the garden. In 2025 it was the first daylily to bloom, and it also ended up being the last.
We had some beautiful weather in the beginning of the week. I even got over to look at the historic cemetery.
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To my detriment, I suspect lol. I started thinking about spring, and gardening, and all of my ideas for the upcoming daylily season ….
We are now headed back into sub-zero Fahrenheit temperatures for a few days and cold through to the start of February. I am not deterred, however, from enjoying the days. Not my first time to this “inevitable”. I am invoking layers and layers of cozy. And focusing on wonderful. The white squirrel crossing our patio toward the door, and only moving away after our dog approached, the way the sun hits the old prism on the window ledge and makes sparkles. Blue hour (before sunrise and after sunset). And then the layering begins. A good cup of coffee while snuggled with our 15 1/5 year old dog who is (amazingly) still with us. The smell of brownies baking while snuggling our 15 1/5 year old dog and watching the prism sparkles slowly move. A delivery of 3 ring binders, plastic sleeves, photo splits, so I am ready to start the next phase of making our nostalgic greeting card binders – while the fireplace warms the room and the wind howls outside and the brownies bake and our dog snuggles closer and makes a little contented sound and I sip my tea and watch the sparkles fade in and out with clouds and sun. Layers and layers of Cozy. It is the only way to get through a Minnesota winter. Or the only way I get through a Minnesota winter 🥰
And don’t forget the June in January pics. These are from June 16, 2024.
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The potted plants are my beloved shamrocks. I overwinter them. Right now they are crazy good indoors, in my office/sunroom.
For many years we have had white squirrels in our neighborhood. True albino. We even took pics in the beginning and sent them in to some sort of tracking site.
This pic dates back to Jan 9, 2019
And for our June in January pics today I have a few. The first is our dog mid-stride, front paw tucked, up north last June 9. WAY in the back is the outhouse. The lanterns mark the way at night 😉
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This next pic will not be a view we see again. It was the very full hosta garden under the linden on June 9, 2024. Mysteriously we lost 18 hostas between fall of 2024 and spring of 2025. We shall not focus on theories, but rather, enjoy the picture, and know that the empty spaces, where the hostas were, found new occupants in 2025.
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And this pic is quintessential early June (June 9, 2024) in our back townhome garden – the peach Asian lilies still in bud, a set of tulip leaves fading (one looks like it may have provided a bunny meal at one point – nothing left where the tulip bloom was), and I also remember that hosta, where a leaf looks a bit eaten, was actually from being stepped on and crushed. Stuff happens.
This morning I had quite a nice surprise – 6 new Mahala daylily seedlings came up in the little seedling pots! I continue to be amazed at the length of time this year’s seeds have taken to germinate. The Mahala seeds were planted in the starter pots on 4/23! Maybe the July heat, coupled with a few rainy days, was what they needed. With this nice surprise, I will leave the remaining planted Mahala seeds in the pots. Maybe more will still germinate.
Another nice treat – a new daylily I planted at the historic cemetery last fall has also bloomed. Red Volunteer bloomed yesterday. She is every bit as beautiful as I hoped, and pictures do not do her justice. She has such a lovely presence! She will be wonderful part of the garden there.
And, in the weirdest twist of the season, but a very welcome one – one, then a second, then a third, and today a fourth tiny baby hosta started to pop up in the spots where they were completely gone until a week ago, lost, even sunken ground. I have only seen that before when a plant has been dug up but a tiny part was unknowingly left behind. This whole lost hostas thing is so weird. I don’t know what to make of it. I will keep watching for more to revive.
This morning it was finally a bit cooler, so I got out into the garden with gusto. I did the last of the maintenance on the forget-me-nots that were wrapping up bloom, and then I cut the pink asian lilies all back to half height. They also wrapped up their bloom this past week. And, as my disciplined self 😉 reminded me, I needed to circle back and trim the peach asian lily stem I forgot last week, so I did that. It would have been kind of fun to see if it made seed, but, as I discovered this morning, I am already short of seedling box space 😉 We shall stick to the plan. Daylily propagation only.
With the forget-me-nots largely gone, this week I also did some additional research on eco friendly mid-season bunny, squirrel, and other digger repellent. Lemongrass came up in my reading, and I already had some diluted in a spray bottle, so I gave the pavers a spritz. We will see how that goes. So far, whatever was digging in the shamrock plant has stopped.
The daylilies are starting to bloom now, and the garden is ready for me to do crosses. I have cleared the blooming forget-me-nots, made paths again to get to the daylilies that are farther back in the garden, cut back the plants that have already bloomed so they don’t go to seed, and found an additional eco-friendly digger deterrent to take over for the forget-me-nots that have been pared back.
For the past few weeks the Asian lilies have been blooming, the remaining hostas have been scaping out, and every day I have seen more daylily scapes. The spots where we lost all the hostas have been reassigned to match our new phase of gardening here, clover has increasingly been removed, and bunny deterrents are in place.
Did you know that forget-me-nots don’t even need to bloom to deter bunnies? It is the leaves that emit a scent that the bunnies don’t like. So I am plucking away on blooms as the stems start to fall over. The flowers are pretty, and make nice little bouquets with the daylilies, but the leaves are what deter snacking bunnies.
That being said, I am also judiciously pulling the forget-me-nots where I want paths to legacy daylilies I want to use for crosses. Lots of transition in place, and the forget-me-nots are at the very top of that list. They will definitely stay, just more strategically placed.
Another fun fact – Did you know that gardens also bake donuts? Yes indeedio! Here is proof.
I have a number of layering (bouquets) in the garden, and I am embracing them more and more as I move into this next phase of the townhome gardens. Maybe the donut will get some friends. We shall see.
On the daylily scene, all daylily seeds harvested here in 2024 are now planted, and the seedling boxes are full, protecting them from the squirrels. I also still have a tray of planted seeds inside. I could make room in the current seedling boxes, but I want to give the Mahala seeds that haven’t germinated just a little more time. You never know.
Sadly, a few of our legacy daylilies don’t seem to be scaping out this year. That means it is division time for them this fall. More shifting. More adjusting to this next phase. And as the garden ages out on legacy plants and adds more daylily seedlings, eventually there will be a whole new look. Free as far as buying plants. And neat to see what is created. Kinda fun.
Daylily season is definitely here. Scapes are popping up on the daylilies, and two seedlings that have never put up scapes before are sporting buds this year. Our longest seedling holdout is even looking like it will finally bloom this year. Very good!
The ninebarks and the weigelia are wrapping up their blooms (at least the first flush), the asian lilies are blooming,
and the first hosta scape appeared a few days ago.
I continue to learn about propagating daylilies in the northern United States. Recently I read that in northern states it can take up to 10 years for a seedling to produce scapes and bloom! I almost gave up on our year one (holdout) seedling! I am so glad I didn’t! Now we wait to see what our pollinators created with that one. (I harvested daylily seeds from pollinator creations for a few years before I started to do intentional crosses.)
Regarding intentional crosses, we now have a 5th and 6th Mahala seedling. I am shocked! Those were the ones I planted in little seedling pots 8 weeks ago! I guess it just goes to show that daylily propagation really does take serious patience.
Out front, the stonecrop have reached their max height before they start to “donut”. I probably should divide them this year, but I have nowhere to put divisions. Maybe a few could go to the historic cemetery. We shall see how much energy I have in September when it is time to divide and transplant. I just transplanted 7 more irises into the cemetery garden, and it is getting pretty full. But maybe …
All of the Blue Mouse Ears hosta divisions and transplants seem to be doing well, even in the sun at the historic cemetery gardens. Very good news! I will continue to monitor them. I need to divide some more of the more mature ones here again this fall. Last year I was scrambling and tucking them in as tests. But they did so well, now I know what they can handle.
Lastly, the progress on the forget-me-nots. I did a bunch of research and it turns out they are a bunny repellant. That does seem true, and that strategy lends itself to useful ideas, both for where to keep them and where to pull them. They are very pretty amongst the daylilies and hostas. A little bouquet.
Two weeks ago it seemed like the gardens were on hold. This week things were full speed ahead. But today with a rain and cooler weather, I am once again spending my time indoors. No worries. It is a good time to finish this blog post. It is a longer one. I need to cut it off, wrap it up, insert the pics, add the tags and categories, and get it out there. Here goes.
Top of mind is still the prospective “Mahala” daylily seeds – With the seed planting underway, I am trying to figure out what I will do to protect the seedlings when they need to go into the ground. The seedling box is not a season-long option with the small seed starter cups I used for those seeds. I used special seedling cups for them, with little greenhouse style covers. I am hoping that will be very successful for germination, but if so, they will need to get into the ground within a month. The little cups will be too restrictive for their roots.
If they are successful and germinate and go to seedling, where I think I am heading is something called a “cloche”. It is a wire mesh cage topper that is placed over the seedlings to protect them. In our case that protection time would be the 2025 gardening season. The cloche solution would allow any seedlings a full season to grow and mature in the ground. Then in the fall the cloche would be removed and in year 2 forward the “Mahala” seedlings would be just like any other daylily in the gardens.
I like the cloche idea as a next step. It keeps with “simple”, and it looks nice. It is also a sustainable one-time purchase if I want to continue the early seedling process in future years, for future dedicated seeds. And it doesn’t add another seedling box to be stored over the winter, a definite bonus.
For right now I am still watching to see if we get seedlings. If we don’t get seedlings, we don’t need cloches. But, fingers crossed, we will need them.
In the meantime, the established gardens are popping, so there has been plenty to do.
In the townhome gardens, everything except two late daylilies, a few missing hostas, and two sedum, have popped, including the bushes. One day the ninebark bushes didn’t even look like they had buds. Two days later they were leafing out. And yesterday I noticed the weigelia bush is taking off too.
For daylilies, all the longtime daylilies, including those I divided and transplanted, are back. There are two daylilies from last fall’s order that I am still watching for. In a funny twist, they are supposed to be part of my “control” daylilies to compare against what works at the historic cemetery, and also, an easier way to do and monitor crosses. It is much easier to step out the door at the townhouse and do a cross than get in the car and drive to the historic cemetery. Not that I don’t intend to do crosses there. I do. But it will just be a little more time consuming. Full transparency, though? The historic cemetery garden is easily two weeks ahead of the townhouse gardens. It is an all-day sun, retaining wall, mulched garden. The two control daylilies that are missing from the townhome gardens are already up at the historic cemetery garden. I am kind of bumming, kind of thinking, “can you say extended crossing season?” We shall see what actually blooms. Hopefully both of the missing control daylilies will still show at the townhome gardens as well. One is a tetraploid, and one is a diploid. The tetraploid is one of my faves. It is one of the “parents” that are waning in the townhome gardens and also one of the “parents” of a cross I am watching to bloom this year. I was hoping to use the newly planted one this year, but eras change, and the torch may be passing to a new “rock steady”. Long story short, it will be a bit before I can fully say what we have to work with at each location for 2025.
Regarding daylily seedlings, awesome news … at all of the gardens the seedlings are back. I am especially excited to see one particular set of 2024 seedlings (an intentional cross), and am hoping it blooms this year. As I had also hoped, all of the 2023 seedlings are quite a bit larger. Hello Yello is three times larger! She will be a focus again this year. I think she is a tetraploid, as a tetraploid cross went to pod last year whereas a diploid cross didn’t. But that tetraploid cross pod started to fail, and then Bunimous Rex (our beloved neighborhood resident very large bunny) or a naughty squirrel got it. I know for sure it was not one of the white squirrels. Na-ah. They are very well behaved. Maybe this year some of the shorter crosses also need cloches lol. We shall see.
On the hosta scene, Blue Mouse Ears continue to amaze me. Last year’s divisions are popping up.
I think if I could only have one type of hosta, it would be Blue Mouse Ears. Yes, Rainforest Sunrise and Guacamole and Elegans and Praying Hands and Touch of Class. But goodness! Blue Mouse Ears year after year after year checks all the boxes – sun tolerant, disease free, drought hardy, and they reproduce very well. So well that they got divided and placed all over last fall. They are now coming up where we transplanted divisions – both here at the townhome, and at the historic cemetery.
The Asian lilies are also coming back.
Not terribly strong. They are quite old. But they are returning. And … the clematis the lawn maintenance guy tried to pull last year? Back! Hahaha! I thought it was a goner, but nope. It’s back.
The daffodils I planted last fall are largely a no show. There are a few coming up at the historic cemetery, but most of the daffodils coming up there are the ones I planted in fall of 2023. And yes, I planted them correctly lol. It seems they did deter moles, as was my primary reason for planting them. They just didn’t bloom well. And that’s OK. The bags of 50 are coming to the end of an era. This fall I want to change things up a little and force grape hyacinth this coming winter. They also deter moles. And I can do smaller pots for forcing. If I want to.
And then there are the tulips. Of all the multiple (lots of) tulip bulbs in the townhome gardens that produce greens, only two have buds.
Yesterday after the greens of a few got stepped on while we cleaned the windows, I tested digging one out. I had kept my hand shovel out after digging and transplanting Blue Bells clematis volunteers.
I thought I might be able to dig the non-blooming tulips and consolidate them to one area (or bring them up north to naturalize or be deer food). Well, I probably should have gotten out the full-sized shovel. Instead of the bulb coming up, the stems broke off first. At which point I thought, “Why are you doing this? Pull the other stems and be done with it for another year.” I would like to say I did that immediately. I did for one more bulb. And then I remembered the next one I went to pull actually bloomed last year. They can fade back. Maybe next year I will feel differently.
To wrap up the afternoon yesterday, while I was in a cleanup mood, I tested to see if the variegated sedum (that it looked like we lost) was really a goner. It pulled out super easy, but wouldn’t you know it, there were little green sprouts. Dang! So, I searched around for a place where I could put it to give it one last chance. Aha! A swaparoo! A two-for. I moved the small Pink Tirza I want to use for crosses again this year to a more accessible spot,
and the variegated sedum went to a more secluded spot to R&R and hopefully come back stronger next year.
With that done, I called it quits. I was kind of still working off a crummy mood from something else. (What is it that makes normally sane drivers turn road risky on rummage sale days? Yikes!) I got myself a sweet tea and sat and looked at how nice the newly relocated Pink Tirza fit into its new home. That was a very good choice 🙂
And then, this morning on my walkabout I noticed … we did not lose the Guacamole hosta, as I feared. It is slowly coming up. The two Elegans, not looking good. Oh well. The circle of life.
Have a great weekend. I may take some time off early next week to put the finishing touches on something I will be kicking off next weekend – the Mahala Felton historical blog series. One post per week will be devoted to getting all the Mahala Felton research I have done out into the public domain. It has been a worthy endeavor, and I really want to share. The tie in is to the historic cemetery. More to come on that.
A fantastic 24 hours indeed! Tuesday I had volunteer time through work to start using up, so I scheduled 2 hours at the start of the day. Hey, calendars determine part of these decisions 😉 Tuesday was predicted sunny a few days before, but it dawned with rain. By 7:30 am it was to a drizzle and I could not stand the wait any longer. I needed my historic cemetery fence gardening fix. Off I went. And as blessings would have it, the drizzle fizzled by the time I pulled up to the cemetery, and stopped within a minute of getting out of the car and starting to work. This was the first project of the day I wanted to complete – a removable border to keep the mulch in on the new iris bed.
It has to be removable come late fall because the snow plow/blower will suck up even pavers set on end. Now maybe the perfectionist in some will say, “Why not right on the edge?” Well, at first I had the mulch mounded, and it was going over the top of the border if I placed it right at the edge. But as projects go, I just had to see if I could make it work right on the edge. I smoothed out the mulch, repositioned the border, and called my friend the site manager, who said “Hello crazy lady!” Hahaha! I asked her if she and her husband were coming over because pics weren’t sending and I needed a second set of eyes. You know what she said? “No, because it’s raining.” Now, first of all, in case you think that was not nice, she is my friend, so she was just having fun, but I tell you, the drive is short from our part of town, and it was not even drizzling at the cemetery when I called her. So I was being blessed for sure!!! Here is the pic I was trying to send her.
I made the decision, I liked the border farther back for now. Maybe I will plant ground cover in front. You just never know what I might do in a garden when I set my mind a-going. I might plant more irises in that bed and move the border forward yet this year even. You just never know with me 🙂
So I got done with the border, poured in my last bag of mulch to chock-a-block full top it off, micro-weeded the right side of the garden, took a few more quick pics, and went back home, to my office, and logged in, 7 minutes late. No worries. It was all good. Work knows what a crazy lady I am too, and that they will see me work way more than 7 minutes late cuz, well, you know, I am one of those weird people that like what I do for a paycheck. We are out there, right? 😉
At the end of my work day the dog got extra lovins because I was going to leave him yet again, but only for an hour or so, to go to the historical society meeting at a historic factory turned hotel, condos, pub, and event venue. So fun!!!
Here are pics of the setting. It was an absolutely beautiful night! No rain there!
Still, I couldn’t stop there. I had spotted the first daylily of my gardening season in bloom at the cemetery in the morning. But my phone was in the glove box, all the way at the other end of the fence garden, and you know, I was running late dadeedadeeda …
So I had to, I just had to, get a pic of that first daylily blooming. Yes, it is the overused Stella D’Oro, but … it is the first daylily of the year in the gardens I love and work in.
I returned home a very happy crazy lady! And our dog celebrated with the zoomies.
This morning, I was treated to a fully opened peach Asian lily and the first opened hosta blooms.
I tell ya, it was a wunderbar 24 hours!
And I think the baby bunny must have had fun too.
Dang it! Now I have to start using that cordial glass again!
Susan's Daily Garden 