The first few daylily types to bloom this year are now wrapping up. The first to say adios will probably be South Seas. She also hasn’t produced any seed pods yet, so I have cut back the two spent scapes – to preserve her energy to rebuild for next season.
Gardens are an experiment. Things are constantly changing, growing, crowding, needing thinning, transplanting … Sometimes it requires patience, and sometimes we get very quick answers. So it is with the proposed woodland hosta garden at the historic cemetary. The deer have spoken. They, or their buddies the turkeys love them! It was a fun trial, but no woodland hosta garden will be built at the historic cemetery. What survives in the full sun of the fence garden will be it for hostas there.
It is also bunny time at the townhouse gardens. Thinking the last blooms on this hosta will be her dinner in the next few nights.
We think it is a her, as she had a very persistent visitor a few weeks back – that we have not seen before.
Sadly, we are thinking this was also the work of the bunny. Compost time. The daylily seedlings in that pot are ready to be planted so those will be a project in the next few days, along with the other potted daylily seedlings.
And the hostas that are done blooming are all getting haircuts. I made the “no hosta seed saving” decision a while back. We do not need any more hostas 😂
The first Marque Moon blooms of the year
I did an intentional cross with Purple D’Oro, which only had one bloom yesterday. Wasn’t sure if they were a good cross option but I decided to just wing it. I have now found a good source of ploidy and parentage info and have found that Purple D’Oro is diploid and Marque Moon is tetraploid, so the cross I did will probably not succeed. But hey, I am now farther down the path to educated decisions for potential crosses.
Yikes! Yet one more thing my poor non-geeky husband and friends will now endure in our conversations. Hopefully I can pay it back with a successful beautiful cross.
Many years ago when I started the townhouse gardens I was also helping my Dad with his gardens. After one of those gardening days, I was sweeping up from some transplanting. A few baby hosta corms were in the sweepings, and instead of tossing them, I brought them home and stuck them in one of our garden areas. My husband said he doubted they would grow. Well, he underestimated those little corms. Grow they did, and multiplied and were divided … And I bought more hostas then, other specialty types of hostas, like blue hostas varieties, which I fell in love with, and which, to this day I still have, and have divided and gifted – like to the gardens I made at the little house up north.
Gifting hostas is a thing.
Since starting to swap out the old landscape rock for mulch at the historic cemetary, we have had the fortune of lots of gifting. Kind of like, “If you build it, they will come”. And come they did. When mulch went in, plants would appear. Not sure from whom – more of an anonymous donor thing. Most of the plants are sun loving … except … the hostas. Those poor hostas are burning, and making me sad, and so I decided to begin a plop swap. The donations are “plops” – they just appear, and they need a “swap” – to get them into the shade and get the sun loving plants that are in another shady garden into the sunny garden.
I started the plop swap last weekend. Four went into this sweet area with this hollowed out tree stump – so beautiful! I love woodland gardens and things like that tree stump.
That garden, like the fence garden, will be a putz project – very slow gradual progress. Hubs said Yes, All the boulders I want to gradually haul from the land up north can be put into that new hosta garden. I want them to contain mulch and clearly define that area as the hosta garden. But hubs has emphasis on “I want to haul”. This is not his first time to the rodeo. Last time he was hauling boulders in totes in the back of his truck! Yes, one tote cracked. But hey, the gardens looked AWESOME!
So we shall see. I need to see if the deer use the hostas for munchies. And how it evolves for space. The left side of the fence garden only has two hostas left to swap. But the right side – oof!!! Lots of generosity in the hosta plopping department there. That will take a little longer, and I need to see how much space the swap really will take up.
Right now we are headed into the 90 degrees and up part of the summer. Not hauling boulders in that for sure. But maybe in late Sept. For a good cause – the hosta plop swap. And any future hosta plopping rescue efforts 💕
What I thought was the Purple D’Oro pollinator created seedling bloomed yesterday and again today. It sure looks like Tirzah, only much shorter and smaller – like Purple D’Oro short. I used to have a site I could use to identify hosta parentage. I can’t find a site like that for daylilies – so far. So, I need to get my act together and remedy that.
Either way it is definitely a keeper. Lovely!
It all started with our now 2 year old grandson. I am not very schmaltzy and I never envisioned I would be utterly taken in by one very little person – haha – but it happened. Turns out grandparenting is WAY more indulgent then parenting. Who knew? Days where daycare backup was needed, events where he (absolutely adorably) sat in his wagon and charmed everyone we met while we shopped for vegetable plants at the University Extension plant sale, neighborhood walkabouts, and eventually sleepovers. And that first birthday where Grandpa agreed to make ribs for 40 people. What??? Grandma said Grandpa needed a much bigger grill for that! So here it came, on a delivery from the hardware store, in all it’s techno gigantic (to me) glory. Grandpa cooked those ribs and they went like hot cakes. And then it was time to incorporate that new grill into our patio area. Yah. But it is awesome, we use it a lot, and I love the smoky taste and even start-up ambiance. Hey, you do stuff to make great experiences, right?
So the new grill moved into the older smaller wood fired grill’s space, and I cringed a bit, but “it was worth it”. The features! It can be started from hub’s phone! Who wouldn’t love a grill you can start from your phone??? But a grill that casts a much larger shadow on the garden?
We moved some overcrowded daylilies that were now in much more of a shadow, and I made a daylily seedling bed. Seedlings need more protection, right?
I have had 4 garden season months to assess. I do not like the seedling bed at all 😂 Not one bit. It looks like a weed patch 👎 I like seedlings mixed among other more mature plants. Soooo … Enlist the help of hubs, reassess, and rearrange to fold in the requirements of our ever changing life. Weed patch (er daylily seedling bed) out – they need more sun anyways – and hostas that also need to move anyways, in, to that newly shaded area.
In a way it will simplify my life. Big, more maintenance free hostas close to the house, and daylilies farther out where I can enjoy them while sitting on the patio after a long work day, enjoying a beverage with hubs, winding down as the smoke from the grill starts up and our dog asks to come up and sit on my lap.
Yah, we can do that.
And on Saturday I will get after that clover – again 😉 But I kind of like the Linden leaves covering up the rock. Looks more natural, “path-y”, right?
Under the linden there is a wonderful garden of hostas and daylilies. The hostas are getting very mature and are encroaching on the very polite daylilies, who are saying, “Alright, here are some greens, but not many flowers for you. Get me some new digs, please. Or maybe just get that guy out of here, please.” Hahaha! I cannot decide on the message. Move the daylilies, or move one very large (5′ wide) hosta. Hubs says move the very large hosta. He may win out. But not sure what I would do with the hosta. No good shady place at the historic cemetary. Deer will eat it up north. It’s almost like I should make a new shade garden. But where?
This one escaped detection when we transplanted the red daylilies last fall. When I saw the buds I did suspect it would bloom red – the buds have a very unique shape, that I am familiar with in our gardens. It was nice to confirm.
Hello there, escape artist!
The daylilies and hostas are all blooming so much now! Yesterday Cedar Waxwing bloomed for the first time this year.
The seedling planter is off the patio. It will soon go back into the garage until next spring. The seedlings are looking more and more like daylilies and are in pots in the “pepper garden” area, with the lavender. Oh yes, and a stray sunflower. Doggone bird seed! 🙂
They will stay there until fall and then find their new home. Their new home will probably not be the seedling garden from last year, as that does not get as much sun as it seems they may need. Hubs got a bigger grill that casts a larger shadow, and I need that area for hostas that are burning – with the tree gone in front and the clematis removed in back. Change, change.
The hostas are also getting love this weekend. I have made the decision not to harvest any hosta seed pods this year, so the ones that are done blooming got a haircut. Here’s an example.
The bees so love the blooms, so I left the few that were still in that category. But soon.
Trimming the hosta scapes as they go to seed will help them preserve energy for the plant. Not sure that is needed – hahaha – as they are getting huge, but just in case. And I may divide a few, if energy allows. We shall see.
The second side of the historic cemetery fence garden also got lots of love this weekend – 32 bags of mulch. Lots of love from way more than me – WAY more!
Removing rock, pulling plastic, laying landscape fabric, sourcing mulch, which is rapidly disappearing. Incredible effort!!! It looks SOOOOO good!!! This picture doesn’t even do it justice. It just goes on and on and on down the hilly slope.
7 more bags of mulch are in storage – in the back of my husband’s truck, which he wants back haha – to go on that side, and then quits for the season there. Mulch is getting harder and harder to find, and $5/bag is not my jam. Hopefully, fingers crossed, the 7 bags will do it.
Next up for the cemetery garden is iris transplanting. But talk is not do, so I will wait to share on that til I have pics of the completed pieces.
I will wrap up with more daylily love. Yesterday the Purple D’Oro had 7 (!) blooms.
Today 3
Today South Seas is also blooming.
Yesterday morning also brought early morning bloom pretties Tirzah and South Seas.
And Just Plum Happy was, well, Just Plum Happy!
Susan's Daily Garden 