The Just Plum Happy daylily is in it’s second day of bloom. 7 blooms today!
In front, the Blue Mouse Ears hostas are wrapping up their bloom.
Farther out, a variety of hostas, the Purple D’Oro daylilies, the coneflowers, and the shamrocks are in bloom.
Bonus story today 🙂
Yesterday we were talking with my mother-in-law and she asked, “Did you give me some peach daylilies?” Indeed I did.
I have one here as well. I bought three and put two in front oh those many years ago – 16? Those two out front did not do as well in that location, so I pulled them out. I didn’t have a place for them and my mother-in-law was tearing out grass along the side of her yard and putting in a new garden. Those two daylilies have done so well there!
Oh the gardens that have grown at her house! The creations, the fish pond, cyclops the one eyed fish who wintered in a big aquarium in their basement, flowers, fruits, vegetables, my first iris rhysomes were from her. My in-laws showed up after we bought our first house – with a tin garden bucket of 40 purple iris rhysomes. It all began with that, my friends. Those 40 iris rhysomes were 400 3 years later. I gave them to neighbors and got others back. Some of those gardens were still going strong when we moved. I leave a trail of gardens all over – hahaha!
The soil of my gardening mind had been tilled at a very early age with weekend visits to my own grandmother, and work in her vegetable garden. My mother also had gardens along the way. And my dorm room was full of houseplants that moved through to our first apartment. But my mother-in-law gets the credit for giving me a love for perennial gardening, almost 40 years ago. And now, she is enjoying my gifts back to her. The sister to the two that are blooming in her garden right now is blooming in my garden right now. In fact today.
If I were to make a deliberate cross with two of my daylilies, I would aim for a cream colored predominance. I’m thinking a cross with Marque Moon. Marque Moon blooms late, so choices are limited with what I have. Maybe the Pink China Doll. Here’s last year for both Marque Moon and Pink China Doll.
Now I have to study – what can be crossed? What might work? What will make blooms? Who were Marque Moon’s parents? Who were China Doll’s parents? What might that influence?
I have 5 seedlings from last year’s seed harvest. I’m not even sure where I’ll put those. Plus the 12 that are at the little house up north.
But I’m considering it.
If you make a deliberate daylily cross and get even one seed and it germinates will there be a good place you can enjoy tending it to give it a chance to mature?
Today’s pic is of my husband’s favorite daylily – Just Plum Happy. It is so close to blooming. Probably tomorrow. And when it starts the garden is super-alive for a whole month.
This sweet hosta needs to move. Where is tbd.
It took forever this year to get the first scapes on the daylilies! That matched perfectly with so many other things I have needed to be patient on recently. It seems to be a theme …
Anyway, the first daylily scapes are here!!!
Fittingly, the first ones (I saw at least) are on the South Seas daylily – yes, my favorite.
Another very close favorite is the Purple D’Oro, and that has a few new scapes too.
The most surprising of all is the peach daylily that had the smooshing and breakage from the roof project now has a scape! Hurray!!!
The buckets and plant pots that protected the daylilies, hostas, and sedum during the roofing project are off, but will have one more appearance in the next couple weeks when the gutter and fascia work is going on.
After that very long, hard to wait but dreading the potential collateral damage May, it was great to get back in the garden.
First up was removing the remainder of the tree seedlings. That got done yesterday. The total of buckets this year was down from the past few years – 5, compared to the usual 7. Hurray!
Then the pollinator created, harvested daylily seeds from 2021 finally got planted. Another post on that coming soon.
The sunflower seedlings also all got pulled. They were an experiment, but the rolling roofing dumpster made that decision for me. My husband was very happy – hahaha!!!
Today my thoughts turned to the front entry garden. It needs love.
One of the Blue Mouse Ears hostas out back also got a little smooshed with the roofing project. That was ok because it needed to be divided anyway, and the flowers get hit by the sprinkler, so moving the whole plant is probably a good idea. Blue Mouse Ears are the perfect size for the entryway area, and with dappled sun due to the Amur Maple they will look great for years to come. That area also had the remnant of a Rainforest Sunrise hosta I mostly moved up north, but it got a bit smooshed too so this will not be it’s shining year. I had to cut away the smooshed leaves. No worries, it will pop back next year. But besides a center hosta and the few Blue Mouse Ears divisions, and the low growing sedum, what to put in that area for color? No to annuals I think. Daily watering – ugghhh. That is for bird baths – haha! No to sedum divisions – the two low growing sedum are enough. Asian lilies seem to die out there, and the stems are not great after bloom either. They require layering to cover those up. So it may be daylilies. I am concerned about the dappled sun, but maybe. Still contemplating.
Finally, the center of one of the back garden areas was pretty bare. Plenty of baby forget-me-nots that will bloom next year, but it needs something additional. I pulled a nice daylily from there to go up north last year, and right afterward I saw how bare that area was and regretted it. Bummer. So that area needs love. But low investment. Trying out the green shamrock. Not sure. Might need a trip to the garden store.
So that was the weekend garden fun. Super enjoyed it.
I tell you what! I am absolutely delighted! The care the roofing team took was very evident. A few smooshes where I was not too concerned about covering, but given all they had to work around, amazing end state! Way way way better than I had even dared to hope for. Judge for yourself 🙂
The new roof will be put on tomorrow.
Here’s some “today” pics.
Here it comes – the best garden planting time of the year, some planned time off work, and ideas floating around in my mind.
The ideas mostly involve dividing hostas, but those are all really slow to show this year.
So far the daylilies and sedum have won the race over the hostas to begin to dot the garden with that fabulous color of spring green.
