Lessons Learned from 2025 Daylily Crossing Season

My 2025 daylily crossing (hybridizing) work is done, and pods are formed and maturing. I have had a week to relax and just enjoy the bloom finale, and some lessons learned are coming to mind. I thought I’d share. Here goes:

1) The journey is exponential. I have gone from harvesting self-seed from one South Seas daylily 7 years ago to now well over 100 intentional and self-seed seedlings. I have seedlings at the townhouse and at the historic cemetery, and have planted seedlings in other gardens as well, including our little house up north that we sold. In addition, this year I have dozens of successful intentional crosses that have gone to pod. Pods often have multiple seeds, so hundreds more seedlings are potentially on the way next year. To move to the next step, some of the 2025 seedlings are moving up north this fall. Those are the 2024 seeds that went to seedling this season.

2) Crosses that worked one year may not work the next. Crosses to the red daylilies were crazy successful last year. This year? Very skimpy. And believe me, I tried. But new ideas abound, and even just flipping the cross, pollen to pod parent, works.

3) Daylilies I want to use a lot for crosses need to be very accessible. I love paths, but I do not love stepping through daylilies on a forget-me-not path. a) Forget-me-Nots stick to fabric, and b) it just feels wrong to step on flowers. As an example, this is Coral Majority. Although she is not a good pod parent for intentional crosses, her pollen is awesome. But she is not in a good accessibility spot right now. Eventually I need to move her to a more accessible spot. Probably next fall.

I have done crosses with her pollen this year, and she also has some self-seed pods again this year. I am, however, more often than not, just enjoying her blooms. She has had quite a few more tame (not so wild tie-died looking) blooms in the past few weeks. Isn’t she looking exceptionally lovely? I will miss her blooms.

4) Only cross one daylily type’s pollen to one clump of daylilies. This year I took that even farther for some crosses and only did one pollen type cross to all of the Marque Moon blooms, all on the same day, and I got 4 pods. Semi-Simplistic. Who wants to make a fun hobby stressful? Not me!

5) Take time to smell the daylilies – literally and figuratively. Some daylilies, like Tender Love (below), are very nicely fragrant, so don’t ignore that treat.

And figuratively, when doing crosses starts to feel like burn-out, stop. The pods will require work yet this season – harvesting, labeling, storing – and then the seeds all need to be stratified, and planted and cared for to germination and growth next year. No shame in setting a date to stop. Name a date and then stick to it.

6) Remember this is a very long game. Years. Maybe more than half a decade. Unless you are willing to pitch greens after just a few years, be patient. I had a six-year-old seedling finally go to bloom this year and it was well worth the wait.

7) There is landscaping, and there is gardening. For “landscaping” be willing to stick to a mass quantity palate. I have a red, white, and blue theme for the landscaping out front with masses of red daylilies – very simple.

8) Gardens are not landscaping. I have gardens out back. In gardens, especially daylily crossing gardens, color surprises happen. Wonderful surprises. And ”not for here” surprises. This year one of the surprises was a red daylily volunteer from the red daylilies out front.

They used to be out back, and I think a seed got in with the Purple D’Oro seedlings I moved, right into my line of view where I sit on the patio. Right next to Equal Opportunity, which turned out to be a peachy, frilly bloom I wish I had 10 of. But Equal Opportunity is done blooming now, and you know what? The red volunteer just keeps blooming away. I love the masses of red out front AND I love the calm of pastels out back. I came to the conclusion that the red daylily seedling will be moving, but probably not until next fall. I am still hoping there are Purple D’Oro seedlings to come in that bunch.

9). Focus, Focus, Focus. Pick one or two lines for crosses (parentage), and work with that. South Seas is already, for sure, my primary. Pink Tirzah will probably be a secondary. Even though I can’t find Pink Tirzah’s parentage, I already have seedlings and pods from Pink Tirzah, so I know that line will also work.

10) Document, Document, Document. And document some more. My sad, sad story on that is that I am beginning to think I have a cross I mis-labeled in the early years. It went to bloom a couple years ago. I had it labeled as a cross between a diploid and a tetraploid, which I might actually have done back then. Or it could be a self-seed. Or it could have been a tetraploid cross where I wrote Pink Tirzah instead of Pink China Doll. It has fairly driven me bonkers! Especially since it has typed out two years in a row as a tetraploid and Pink Tirzah is supposed to be a diploid – but, then again, I found reports of it crossing with a tetraploid. Since this is such a long game, testing out for replication will take years. In the meantime, Hello Yellow is a nocturnal tetraploid that took a cross with two different tetraploids this year and made pods. And in the end, I am doing this for fun. Hello Yellow may forever remain a beautiful mystery.

11) Enjoy self-seeds. I have fallen in love with the self-seeds that went to bloom in our garden this year. They all will stay. I may even do an “only self-seed” year in the future. You never know.

So there you have it. 10 Lessons Learned from the 2025 intentional daylily crossing work I did, plus an extra option for “no intentional cross required” (the self-seeds).

I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and Happy Gardening!

Been Kind of Spoiled

All the 2025 crosses are now recorded in the excel spreadsheet, and I am starting to wrap that up for the record. I thought about doing a cool graphic, but that will need to wait until much later. There are garden areas to plant with seedlings.

Yesterday morning I took a fair amount of time to enjoy the day’s blooms. I was tempted to do just a few more crosses, but I stuck with the plan. Eventually I started to make decisions on locations for the remaining 2025 seedlings, and then began day 1 of the tucking in. They will not bloom for at least 2 more years while they establish, and by then I will be dividing their neighbors. The first decision was easy – the second (and final) set of 3 Mahala seedlings that will live in our garden went in today. The rest of the Mahala seedlings will go to the historic cemetery in September.
Next week half of the Molly Cowles seedlings will go into their 3 year space. And then the Coral Majority self-seed seedlings, and on it will go. Some seedlings will go up north. Definitely half of the Molly Cowles seedlings. My DIL is giving me landscaping fabric, we have boatloads of boulders to secure it, and we are a go. More on that this fall.

The past six weeks have been so full of daylily color that I got kind of spoiled. Daylily season is like having fresh flowers delivered every single day, and not having to deal with changing the water in vases lol Up front the ninebarks are putting on quite the show, but out back there is increasingly a sea of green staring back at me. I want to solve for that. Short term I think I will bring more purple shamrocks out, but as I am tucking seedlings in, I am planning (hopefully) for more late season soothing color from the crosses in the next few years. I could also propagate more Autumn Joy sedum and plant them around the bend in the path (the bees love them). We shall see.

Pivot

Today is my cutoff day for doing daylily crosses. I am, admittedly, a little bit sad, but I know it is a good decision. I don’t want to overwork the daylilies with pods, I am fatigued myself on all the planning and crossing and documenting, and I want to have a fall, too. If I stop now, all the pods should be through the maturity window by the time I want to stop watching for pods that are opening.

So today is it. I had all the crosses done by 10am, and now I watch and wait.

Although I do shudder a bit at the volume of crosses I have done this year, I have lots of good notes and lots of all types of pics. I also have been very pleased with the new seedling planters. I am set up with space for seeds that go to seedling next year, plus ways to protect the seedlings.

I am also reminding myself this is not the end of daylily bloom season, just the end of the crossing season. In fact, the late daylilies are not even at peak. I do, however, have all the crosses I want on those as well. So now I get to enjoy. Just enjoy. And get my creative mind going again on my fall list. What needs to be divided, what needs to go to a new location, what worked with the seedling boxes and what next year will pivot to on that setup.

I am also reminding myself this has been is a big change year for me. This hobby is now solidly very deliberate. I don’t random buy anymore. I don’t walk garden stores, seeing what they have chosen to stock. I like to see what is available through hybridizers and propagators, but I seriously consider things I did not before – timing, color compatibility, height, pollen and pod fertility, ploidy, parentage … It is still super fun, but with a specific focus I did not include before.

What happens next, yet this year? Divisions and transplanting work starts tomorrow. Not of the daylilies with pods, but of seedlings that need to come out of pots and go into the ground, and of hostas that need to be relocated. I am also looking at making sure I have paths for next year’s accessibility. If it is too hard to get to something I won’t use it for crosses. Totally OK, but again, needs to be intentional.

So tomorrow turns the corner to all that. I will continue to share as I go.

Happy wishes to you for good garden time until then!

Marque Moon bloomed yesterday

Marque Moon bloomed yesterday for the first time this season. She is, as always, absolutely beautiful this year.

Marque Moon has been in our garden for a very long time, so planning crosses with her is pretty easy. I had a number of crosses queued up waiting for her bloom and have done quite a few of those yesterday and today. There are just a few left, pending specific bloom, and then all of the crosses for the year will be done, at least once.

With Marque Moon’s bloom, we move farther into the time where I stop doing crosses for the season, and just enjoy the gardens. It gets to a point with crosses, as a hobbyist, and with the heat and air conditions that we have, where not only the daylilies wind down, but I myself begin to wind down. First, I start to want a day just enjoying the blooms, but then eventually I get to the point where I realize that “we’re good” with crosses. That’s where I am. Just a few more days to go.

Remember, by now I have done the crosses at least once, with many much more, and now we are at the volume stage. In deciding when to wrap up, I consider not over-stressing pod parents, how much I could reasonably plant and house next year if the crosses I have done would all go to seed maturity, and the pod maturity window. Then I set a date for myself when I will stop doing crosses. For me, this year, that date will be July 31. I am feeling it. Time to be done. Not with the daylilies, of course, but with crosses. And, of course, if we get self-seeds, I will let those stay.

A lot of work goes into more serious work on the crosses, a lot of documentation and tracking and planning and research. I am already considering scope for next year. I really enjoyed all the beautiful self-seeds this year, and they will be a part of the plan go forward. Maybe a bigger part than deliberate crosses. I am still considering.

But for now, the Marque Moon crosses will be done and documented, and then we watch. And enjoy late season beauty like this.

And continue the fall work list planning for 2026 improvements.

Volunteer

Volunteer. What a wonderful concept. Freely giving time and energy to accomplish something meaningful for and with others is a noble activity. It often gives back to the volunteer every bit as much as is given to the recipient. It is very humbling, and very rewarding. I highly recommend it.

The term Volunteer when speaking of daylilies brings an equally wonderful feeling for me. That a daylily seed from a daylily I own can fall to the ground, find a suitable place to germinate, and survive to seedling and eventually bloom is a wonderful treat for me. A gift.

I have been thinking about this. 1) Why would I not want those? 2) What can I do to encourage that (as another source of daylily creations) and still track the source? 3) Is self-seed not a form of volunteering? How wonderful is that?

Today Red Volunteer, the daylily, bloomed for the second time in our townhome garden. I bought 3 Red Volunteer daylilies last year and planted two at the historic cemetery and one at the townhome. 2 of 3 bloomed this year. That in itself is awesome! Then the Red Volunteer that bloomed at the historic cemetery made – you guessed it – a self-seed. Oh yah. If that pod makes it to maturity, you can bet I will harvest it. And if the seeds are viable and go to seedling, you can bet I will plant the seedlings at the historic cemetery. Maybe even name them (all the same for the seedlings from that one pod of course). And what if it self-seeds again next year? The same? Could we run out of volunteer names? Not sure. But it would be wonderful to try!

Here at the townhome, I did deliberate crosses with the two Red Volunteer blooms this year. The first one – you guessed it – already has a pod. I am hoping the cross I did today is equally successful. Know why? Well … today I crossed Red Volunteer with Coral Majority. Coral Majority is very interesting. She is a super giver of pollen, she frequently self-seeds, and most often I cannot deliberately use her as a pod parent. She just isn’t built for that. She has very bold coloration, very often looks like she is tie-dyed, and is not a messy daylily. She drops her spent blooms pretty quickly if they don’t produce pods. Now doesn’t that have a lot of possibilities? And she is a child of South Seas, with a diploid in the parentage although both Coral Majority and Red Volunteer are tetraploids. Limitless ideas come to mind.

For this year, it only has the one chance. We shall see what is meant to be.

Calm Garden Activity Day, 2026 Garden Prep

We are having a “calm” garden activity day again today. The daylily wind down has begun, and we are also having an on and off, sometimes very heavy rain day. No crosses were done today, but full disclosure, yesterday I kicked off the “wacky cross” period. I did an intentional “should not work” cross. It was probably good to take a break today haha.

I did that cross yesterday because I wanted to try a cross between two daylilies I really like. One is a diploid and one is a tetraploid that has a diploid in its parentage. What is the worst that can happen – it could fail? I took the chance. And I enjoyed the two daylilies all day. And more full disclosure, there will probably be a few more wacky tests in the weeks to come 😉 It is getting to be that time of year when I am willing to try those things. You never know. It could work. Last year, on a wind down season whim, I did the somewhat wacky color combo cross that got us the 28 Mahala Felton seeds. 24 are now seedlings. Yes, the parents were both tetraploids, so it was much more likely to succeed, but it was definitely on a whim. A very bold color cross that does not match the color palette I usually aim for. I am now very excited to see just how much it reflects the very bold Mahala Felton that I discovered in my historical research last winter.

We are also starting to approach the seed maturity window. After months of watching and tending the gardens pretty intensely, I like a little more freedom in fall when the bugs are down and the weather is getting nicer. I have learned from experience that I sometimes miss seed pod maturity when I get busy like that in the fall, so any seed pods I really really really want to catch need to be crosses done in the next couple weeks. The rest need to be ones I am ok potentially going to direct sow, or the squirrels or bunnies or birds 😉

On the bloom scene, we had one “first time seedling bloom” today. It was the last seedling scape of the season that was still pending bloom, and the reveal was a bit unexpected. It was a seedling I moved more into the sun last year. For expectation, I was going on my early years style of documentation. I was hoping for the Purple D’Oro that was in my documentation of the area I moved it from, but as the scape matured and the buds began to move to bloom, I began to suspect it was not going to be much like a Purple D’Oro. It was too tall and started to show red on the bud a few days ago. Still, I held onto hope that it was a very cool pollinator cross. Alas, today when it bloomed it looked exactly like the red daylilies we have en masse out front. It even has the signature curls at the end of the petals. That I absolutely love.

Seedling red daylily is definitely pretty, but not new. The red daylilies used to be in the area where the Purple D’Oro seedling was. I am guessing the Purple d’Oro seedling I documented did not survive and the red daylilies had a direct sow self-seed in that same area. Stuff happens. It will probably go up north as one of our “parents”.

And that leads to a further discussion on the plan that is forming for next year. It does go a few years back, for sure. Back to the years when I moved at least part of the garden to the little house up north (that we sold). In those years, we were moving toward a more “structured” look at the townhouse. At least in the front of the townhouse. We moved the red daylilies at the townhouse out of a more shady area in back to the front of the house and into much more sun. We had started with just a few big box bare roots and had grown them to the point where we had a lot of them. I wanted to further the development of our “red, white, and blue waves” theme out front. That was an awesome decision. And we are now “there”. In Spring the Bluebells clematis starts the wave. Then the red daylilies start blooming. For colorful interest, once they get going, we have at least a dozen and around peak two, even three dozen red daylily blooms each day. That wave gradually moves toward the less sunny area, and the red daylily blooms continue well into August. Just about that time the Marque Moon buds start to mature, and by the time the red daylilies start to wind down, the Marque Moon (creamy shimmery white) start to bloom. Even though they are old now and in the Linden roots, they still make a show. And the whole pattern ends at the Linden changing colors. There also used to be quite a few big hostas there, but I digress. The blue flowering hostas that are now in that area are earlier blooming, the Blue Mouse Ears divisions.

As I gradually move the daylily propagation to our land up north, the wave pattern will become de facto at the townhouse and will start to wrap around the back. Probably a different color scheme. Probably keeping more pastels. Simplified as I stop planting seedlings here. And with that decision made, now I can also start to look at what needs to be divided this fall and use that as my starting template to also bring mature daylily divisions up north. I want them to self-seed up north. I have pretty much fallen in love with self-seed, and I am thinking it will be quite a bit of my go forward approach. We have soooooo many pollinators up north. If the deer can be kept away from the daylilies, I am so excited to see what self-seeds we get. The daylily divisions we bring up can be our mature daylily test subjects, to see how the deer react to a few unprotected daylilies. Unlike the seedlings, in the spring, when the mature daylilies start to grow, I will need to remove the cloches. We shall see how that goes. It will definitely be a determining factor in the fencing approach. Step by step. This is a long game.

For today, before it rained, I worked on maintenance. One of those things was beginning to remove the scapes from the Blue Mouse Ears hostas. They are done blooming and I do not want them to spend any energy producing seed. I will be dividing more of the Blue Mouse Ears this fall, so I want to preserve their energy to help them handle division as well as possible.

And I did grab some pics to share before the rain started.

The South Seas only have five buds left after today. In our garden, 2025 is, without a doubt, the year of South Seas and family, and I am so excited to continue that as one of my focus lines.

The Coral Majority looked way less “wild child, tie dye” today. She and South Seas are the pollen rock stars this year.

And Pink Tirza wrapped up bloom out back today. I got two “wish list” crosses from her this year.

Naomi Ruth also continues to delight.

I am fully enjoying the 2025 blooms and even having a little extra creativity. And little by little we are moving into the staging for next year’s gardens and the start of the seedling garden up north.

I heard it again this week, and it is absolutely true: A garden is never done. Thank goodness 🙂

The beauty of self-seed daylilies

It is the time of year where I get to start relaxing my mind and start just following the palette of daylily crosses I have put together for the year, crosses put together depending on how and when each daylily bloomed. Yes, it is still a lot of work, but the template has been made, and now I get to spend more time really, deeply enjoying the second half of our daylily season.

Last Friday was our apex. The daylilies were blooming like crazy for days, and there were also spent blooms in various stages, still on the scapes, making pods. It is not my favorite “look”, but it is my craft. I let them do their best work, even if it means blooms that follow get a little compromised. It is actually my cue that the garden is about ready to move into the second half of the season. It is also a very good reminder to me that I am not the only one working on the garden. And nowhere is that more evident than in the self-seed blooms. They are all over the garden, too.

Side note – I need a spreadsheet to keep track of which daylilies are pollen producers only, pods only, and especially when I do a “one up” cross, either as a test or because I could not resist. And remember, not everything that worked last year is working this year, for both pollen and pod, and then there is rain and sprinkler patterns and location and age. It is … a lot. A lot that my very busy mind really enjoys. But there is even a point at which I say enough. This year it was the apex.

So back to self-seed. I cannot resist harvesting self-seed. This year we had quite a few South Seas self-seed seedlings go to bloom for the first time. I started this daylily propagation journey by harvesting self-seed, and South Seas is really good at self-seeding. (It could also be because I use South Seas pollen a lot, and that may cause self-seeding.)

All of the South Seas seedlings for all of the years up to 2023 seed harvest/2024 seedling, bloomed this year. And although I separated the years into separate plantings, I stored all of the South Seas self-seed harvest together, and the next year when they went to seedling, I planted them together, as a group, by year.

I am starting to see very different “looks” in the different yearly planting groups. The most dramatic has come through Equal Opportunity. Below are two scapes, and two different looks.

I love them both.

After seeing this year’s blooms, I get the feeling there is definitely a message go-forward. First, “Please don’t stop harvesting self seed!” (I won’t) and maybe even, “When harvesting self-seed – save, store, and plant each self-seed pod separately” (yet to be determined).

More research to come …

Rain Day

Today looks like a rain day.

Too bad because Naomi Ruth bloomed this morning for the first time this season.

Naomi Ruth going to be the next cross I try with red daylily. Pink Tirzah pollen in is not making successful crosses with red daylily this year so Naomi Ruth is going to be stepping in. Cuz red daylily is just to enticing to leave uncrossed.

But probably not today. Today is one of those days where we just enjoy a different type of look.

Terrific Tuesday

Today dawned with lots of “first blooms” for the season. Coral Majority was one. I was so tempted to cross all the South Seas self seed seedlings that bloomed for the first time this year, but I just couldn’t do it.

‘Equal Opportunity’ is soooo good right now, and I don’t want to tax her.

She is definety moving forward, but if I cross her with anything this year it will be to work on making her even lighter and add more glisten – probably a cross with Marque Moon, if the timing aligns. Otherwise Equal Opportunity will not be crossed this year.

We now have a name for this daylily. ‘It’s a Puzzle’. And I love ‘It’s a Puzzle’ exactly how she is. So no cross there.

Daylily ‘Shirley Dalaska’ also will not be crossed. She is beautiful! And ‘Simple Perfection’ was not blooming today. I may cross ‘Simple Perfection’ as she is looking more and more like South Seas, but TBD.

But there is one South Seas self seed seedling (yet unnamed) that would be perfect with a little extra spunk, and Coral Majority would be just perfect. So I did that first cross of a South Seas self seed seedling today. We shall see how it goes.

In case you are wondering, below is Coral Majority. She is a wild child. But she is an awesome pollen producer.

To help you get over that shock of a wild child daylily 😂 here are some soothing bird pics from this morning.

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.