Today I am especially thankful for the very nice, and very gentle, provision of rain we are getting. I do love to be out in the gardens, enjoying them, pampering them, tending to them, but balance is also important, and gentle rain days are always a two-fold gift for me. They bless the garden, and they bless me with an indoor day.
So today the newly planted hostas at the historic cemetery will get a good gentle rain soak, and, as I have been reminded yesterday, with that “still, small voice”, that the inside of our home needs pampering 12 months of the year, I have been provided an indoor day to encourage me to do that. I could fill up my day with other busyness, but those would be opportunities I would be seeking out, and not what has already been provided for me.
But, before the rain started, I saw even more of the peach Asian lilies are opening. Thank you, Lord, for the lilies!
And in my morning walk about the gardens, I also noticed that Equal Opportunity (one of my daylilies from seed) has its first scape of the season, and Pink Tirzah also has a scape. Thank you, Lord, for those! I have been checking for those. I have done my part, and I was waiting patiently on Him for the next provision (for blooms) and confirmation (for the select crosses I want to do).
I am constantly reminded we are all here for a reason, and in order to fulfill that reason we need to have a deep abiding relationship with our Lord, so we can hear His will. I can do my will all I want. He lets me do that. But my most peaceful outcomes are when I am in His will.
We are now coming into the latter part of the daylily seed germination watch and moving into the bloom season for the Asian lilies.
Two seedling planters remain.
As I sat on the patio this weekend, relaxing in my rocker after reducing seed plantings, I looked over at the two seedling planters and realized that is what I want next year. Enough capacity to be creative, but also a nice limit. 32 of the silicone base medium seedling pots I love to work with fit perfectly in the grey box, and 4-5 medium plant pots fit in the cedar box.
I am thankful for the expanded daylily propagation experience last year. Doing all the crosses in 2025 was a boatload of fun, something I had to try. And I am grateful for the result of that harvest as well. I still have a few stragglers so there may be additions, but I currently have 15 new daylily seedling varieties from last year’s work. Lots of potential to work with in my future daylily crosses – when/if they bloom in the years ahead. That’s good.
My garden thoughts and my garden words and my garden pictures are now shifting into well-worn territory – with a few surprises, but nothing too crazy.
This week the Asian lily bloom season started. The peach ones are consistently first, but this year, the pink ones under the Linden have returned right along with the peach ones. I thought they were in decline in our gardens, but I got a happy surprise this year. They were just rebuilding.
A couple years back, on a very hot September day, I sat with a plethora of Blue Mouse Ears hostas I had divided and needed to transplant. I had an idea. The pink Asian lilies under the Linden had been fading to almost nothing over the previous years. The Linden provided some nice afternoon shade. The Blue Mouse Ears hostas might look nice along the path at that corner! But I was whooped. Like getting dizzy whooped. My husband agreed to help. As we dug the holes for the Blue Mouse Ears divisions, we removed the few pink Asian lily bulbs we found and that was that. It was time to stop. I later transplanted the pink Asian lily bulbs to the historic cemetery, along with some fans from Purple D’Oro daylilies I had also divided at the townhouse. I made a quick little note, went to water them every other day or so, and then pretty much stopped thinking about those plantings.
Last year, 2025, I did notice some Asian lily greens were returning at the historic cemetery and at the townhome some pink Asian lilies did bloom. That was nice. But when I saw the pink Asian lilies at the historic cemetery this week, I was delighted. Even more, I was surprised to see greens from daylily “seedlings” planted with the Asian lilies. Maybe there was hope for seedlings, I thought. But today as I was planting some donated hostas, I found the marker for the Purple D’Oro self-seed seedlings. Those seedlings did not make it. The Purple D’Oro divisions did. It’s all good. I am hoping to see Purple D’Oro daylily blooms at the historic cemetery this summer. Or next 😉
Additional fun in the townhome gardens:
The Malva Zebrina Hollyhocks are growing very nicely, as is the sole seedling of my experiment planting one daylily seed at a time in tiny little pots in 6 pk trays. I am equally happy to report that the wave 2 plantings of seeds from that same cross yielded much better results – see pot next to the cloche on the ground. I am not a professional propagator by any means, but, for me, multiple, same cross seeds, planted in one pot – Golden.
And we continue to get Currant seedlings. This one may not stay. I think I need that space for daylily seedlings.
But this one probably has found a home.
And at the historic cemetery:
The historic cemetery has quite a few Stella De Oros. Last year they hit their stride and then had a lot of self-seed pods. I harvested the seeds on a whim but doubted those seeds would do anything. This spring I dumped those 80 seeds in soil in one big pot, put dirt over them, put a cloche over the top, and made sure they got water. Well … they must be meant to be! They are coming up! More every day! We’ll see what the count looks like in a few weeks. Where I will put them is very much TBD. The fence garden, both sides, are getting nice and full.
And that brings me to another fun thing – we had a nice donation of a variety of hostas for the historic cemetery. Some are already allocated for a new project, but there were a few spaces on the left side of the fence garden where I have repeatedly tried to plant seeds and seedlings, and for whatever reason, they just don’t make it. So today I officially threw in the towel on that idea and used those spaces for some of the donated hostas. Amazingly, even though that garden is in full sun for almost the full day, hostas do well there. I hope the new ones follow that pattern. They look very nice in their new location!
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.
Our second grandson was born last Friday! That whole week was a non-gardening week. We absolutely were in the gardens, but with our two year old grandson. I watched with sheer joy as he followed the garden path wearing his cute little camo Crocs, pausing to pick up rocks, and dump them on other plants. Wait!!! What is happening here? Has my brain turned to Grandma mush? Perhaps.
While we were “out”, the daylilies got scapes. The South Seas is the one that first caught my eye,
but the Purple D’Oro and the Just Plum Happy are not far behind
We are getting some bonus clematis blooms.
And the Asian lilies are already in mid-seaon.
The hostas deserve a blog post of their own (coming up).
Baby is doing very well, 2 year old grandson already has our next “date” on our calendar, and somewhere in between work, building out the cabin up north, and grandchildren time, I need to pull all the forget-me-nots that are done blooming and are going to seed.
If I catch them early on in the seed casting process, I get just the right amount to bloom two years out (they are biennial).
Bunimous (named because he is dinosaur sized as rabbits go – haha 😂) decided which Asian lily blooms I should have in a vase. He must have started his munching but then left a broken stalk for me. Thanks Bunimous!
In the background is the daylily seeds result for this year – one for sure. I think the other two are grass – I think. Those two will go up to the camping land in a spot that gets enough sun and does not totally dry out. If they surprise me, AWESOME! If not, they will be in good company. More to come on that and change of seed soil in future blogs.
The asian lily below just bloomed. That plant is one that fell in the category of “tulip” syndrome. It bloomed strong year one, faded year two, and is now “iffy,” for blooming each year. Like the faded tulips, I leave it in the ground just to see if it will do anything. And it provides early greens when the garden is first coming up in spring.
The clematis could be trimmed, but hey! It covers the boring bare rock 🙂
Susan's Daily Garden 