Today the seedling box with my grand experiment got emptied out. The one where I planted one seed per tiny pot in 6 pk trays. Little squirrel did try to start the emptying job ahead of me, but those efforts were unsuccessful, thank goodness.
Out of the 48 daylily seeds I planted in those little pots, one did germinate and went to seedling. I thought it might be the cross, but a few days ago the other seeds of that same cross that I planted my normal way – multiple seeds per larger pot – started to germinate. They were planted a month later and went outside later as well. So, the little 6 pk seedling trays are definitely out, and I chalk it up to experience and move on.
Under the cloche (wire protective basket) in the picture below are the contents of the grand experiment – the one daylily seedling and then a couple of what I think are the Malva Zebrina Hollyhocks I have mentioned in previous posts. Maybe the “gift” of those teeny tiny pots is the germination of those 20+ year old hollyhock seeds? Kind of. I do have another of those hollyhock seedlings in a larger pot too, planted at the same time.
Anyway … My heart is so happy to see that daylily seedling in the ground with the two hollyhocks. They look teeny tiny right now, but I know only too well their potential. My guess is that next year that big pot full of shamrocks will not have a home in that location 😉
We are in the middle of a drought AND the sprinkler system here is also in the middle of some repairs. Now, shhhh, but lawns to me are the most beautiful when they are old. Really old. Like a century old is wonderful. I don’t, shhhh, think house yards need to be golf course worthy. That is just me. I know I am probably in a tiny minority with that belief.
But … gardens 🙂 🙂 🙂 They are so worth pulling out the hose. And that is what we did tonight.
It unexpectedly brought back such fond memories, especially times with my Dad, with him pulling out the coiled hose, starting up the water, not even having a fancy sprayer, sometimes just a thumb fanning the water out – until the water got way too cold. Tonight, as our old sprayer hobbled along, definitely needing replacement, I was in memoryville of those times long ago, spraying the gardens, sometimes the yard if it really needed it. And tonight, when I sat down on the patio and looked out over the freshly sprayed garden, I felt like I had brought a little bit of those long-ago times to our gardens here.
The sprinklers here will be fixed. I will probably not get a ton more sessions like tonight. But wow! Was it fun!
The Weigelia is beginning to bloomAnother “Bouquet” with a few of my seedlings – that I hope will bloom this year (in front) and some Forget-me-Nots in betweenWe are growing one “edible” this year – “Basket of Fire” hot peppers. Mainly, they are ornamental 😉These “Snow in Summer” blooms are exceptionally pretty at the historic cemetery this year.
And the icing on the cake – the purple irises are starting to bloom at the historic cemetery.
This is one I transplanted from the old garden
Beyond that, the daylily seedlings are popping up at a pretty good pace now with the warmer weather. We have our first seedlings from crosses with South Seas self-seed daylilies, and we have new crosses from our regular stock, including two new crosses with Red Volunteer.
It is Memorial Day in the United States. It is a dedicated time to remember all the people who have made incredible sacrifices to form and establish and maintain this wonderful republic we call the United States of America. I am so very grateful.
This past week we remembered the anniversary of my Father-in-Law’s passing. A loving husband, father, family member, friend, community member, and World War II veteran. We are so thankful to have had him in our lives. We were truly blessed and our memories with him are a treasure.
Memorial Day weekend also kicks off the “unofficial start of summer”, and we take time to enjoy gatherings and relationships. We can accomplish all the things in the world, but there also needs to be rest and fellowship. Those times form sweet, sweet memories.
And, as it falls, a couple days ago it was also time to renew my blog domain for another year. I am officially in year 9 of this blog. But full transparency, I almost let the blog go. It isn’t that there is nothing to write about. The garden is absolutely beautiful. It is living its best life and doing a wonderful job of providing all sorts of beautiful moments and opportunities. And it is a place for many types of moments – moments to rest and moments to challenge myself and moments to contribute. It’s just that I have been in the rest and enjoyment moments so much that I haven’t gotten back into a good (contributing) pattern of posting again. I take the pics, I consider what would be fun to share, and then I relax and think “I’ll post tomorrow” 😉
For historical reflection, I am recognizing I truly am at what could be called “Someday When”. So much of where I wanted to go with the gardens is now here. I am enjoying it more and more and adjusting it less and less. And yet, there is always room for “one more” when circumstances provide. As some 20-year-old seeds recently taught me.
This winter I decided it was time to see if the 20+ year old Malva Zebrina Hollyhock seeds I had harvested from my gardens at our first house would grow. I planted those seeds indoors in a pot and watered them, and they did nothing. I thought I had my answer. But, as I often interject into posts that daylily propagation from seed is a long game, so appears to be the journey of at least a few of those Malva Zebrina Hollyhock seeds. It appears they were still viable. They were just needing more time to show up for the 2026 garden. But, thinking the seeds were not viable after all those years, when I began to plant my 2025 harvested daylily seeds, I took the dirt from the pot I planted the Malva Zebrina Hollyhock seeds in and used it in planting the daylily seeds. Fast forward two months, the daylily seeds are emerging, albeit slowly. And along with them, some “familiar looking” seedlings have also been showing up in those trays and pots. They are definitely not daylily seedlings, but since they were so familiar looking, I decided to leave them in place and see what happened. I may be mistaken, but I am thinking they are Malva Zebrina Hollyhock seedlings. Time will certainly tell, but I am thinking they are from that 20+-year-old seed!
Screenshot
And I realize those seedlings are a garden bridge from the house where I started my own gardens, to today. If they survive, they will have a chance to grow at the back of Sandy’s corner, a backdrop to the 35+ year story of my gardening experience. All these years later, a story of different eras, still thriving. I hope the hollyhocks do well. That would be super fun!
And it brings back so many memories! A few days after we closed on our first house, my Mother-in-Law and Father-in-Law came with buckets of irises, dug from their garden. They knew how much I loved their gardens. They were sharing. We kneeled down in the dirt on the west side of the house and planted 40 irises together. Three years later when it was time to divide them there were hundreds! Those irises were gorgeous!
And I remember the first seed catalogues that arrived after we bought our first house. My husband teased me as I spouted off scientific names I was learning from poring over gardening catalogues so much. But it wasn’t just that. Those catalogues that came in the mail were so enticing. I imagined beautifully lush gardens coming out of tiny seed packets. It all looked so wonderful. And so, I bought seeds and started growing them. And I began to dig out grass and lay down mulch all around the periphery of our back yard, much to the chagrin of my husband who thought the sod we had laid was the final frontier. Oh, I sooo remember the aching muscles from laying that sod! And I sooo remember the aching muscles from tearing out that sod, too 😉 Anyway, I planted layers with shrubs at the back of the beautiful gardens I was imagining, and I planted tiers coming forward from that. Seeds, bulbs, tubers, wild roses. And some food. But mostly perennials. And every morning, sometimes at 5 am, I walked our black lab around the gardens, discovering what the new day had brought. Wonderful!
Then one year I stumbled on hostas. My love of hostas started very innocently, from bringing home (“saving”) a few discarded corms my Dad was sweeping up off the driveway after we did some dividing and transplanting. My husband doubted they would grow. They were teeny, tiny. But oh! did they ever take off! And thus started a long journey in “Hostaville”. Lots of years. Hosta of the year, buying backwards into that collection, in multiples of 3-6, yah. That was fabulous. Many of those hostas are still in my current gardens.
Then I got some daylilies. That, like seeds, was me succumbing to successful garden catalogue marketing. The same company that was successful at getting my seed business from catalogues also featured 1-year daylily seedlings. The pictures got me. I imagined a lush garden full of beautiful blooms. That came, eventually, but it took a while. Quite a while. Nevertheless, over the years, as the daylilies began to fill out, I fell in love with those ‘Purple D’Oro’ daylilies, and then ‘Marque Moon’. I also bought some more bare root varieties, sometimes in big box stores – ‘Autumn Red’ for instance. And I bought some stock from a couple large local garden centers. I was chugging along, adding and removing things as they worked or didn’t work in the gardens, and then it happened.
In retrospect, it was a wisp, a vaper. A wisp, a vapor that became another wonderful memory. Here’s what happened. Our son brought his new girlfriend over to meet us for the first time. Kindred garden spirits, it took us just a few minutes to start chatting everything gardens. I do remember the smiles on my husband and our son’s faces. Yah 😉 Some minutes in, I was saying I needed to deadhead the drying daylily pods. Our son’s girlfriend’s response was, “Don’t throw those seeds out. You know you can make new daylilies from those.” And those few words started the daylily propagation journey I am on today. That very year I harvested my first daylily self-seed and began to try to bring them to seedling. Direct sow led to harvesting and storing and stratifying and various iterations of crosses and planting to eventually get to seedlings and then, very eventually, daylilies. And yes, our son’s then girlfriend is now my daughter-in-law 🙂 We still chat gardens, all the time. Most recently as she realized one of our grandsons was pouring grass seed into the dirt for her flower planter lol. Oh yah 😉 It’s all good 🙂
And 9 years ago, in a bit of a “state”, I started this blog. Our younger son was hiking the entire Pacific Crest Trail (from Mexico to Canada) and blogging on that. I was a bit concerned about that adventure, and in an effort to focus my energy positively, I created my own blog, about gardening. And so this blog began, 9 years ago.
So, my craft room is the garden, my plant storage is in the ground or in little envelopes of seed, and my contributing springs from that. Last year I harvested hundreds of daylily seeds, and they are now planted in pots and in various stages of seedling and pending germination. What I hope will be daylily “Hannah Cowles’ needs to be planted soon. There is just one seedling from that cross. Among hundreds of seeds from that cross. VERY unusual for me. But fitting, as Hannah Cowles was the first woman American settler in our lineage, going all the way back to the 1600s. And potential daylily ‘Hannah Cowles’ will be planted right next to two large bunches of what I hope will be daylily ‘Molly Cowles’. Those seedling bunches were new seedlings last year. Molly Cowles was wife to Sgt Asa Cowles, a Patriot in the American Revolutionary War. Asa’s brother Jabez died in a British prison as a Prisoner of War.
And so, the history melds with memories with the gardens through the years now down to our grandchildren.
This year does, however, feel different. Last year was a pivotal year for me. I was setting some new groundwork, and as so often happens, the gardens were a big part of that. I was marching happily, even exuberantly down the daylily crosses path and feeling very creative. An analogy would be going to the crafts store and buying a bunch of very cute embroidery or knitting or crocheting or finger weaving or scrapbooking supplies. Soon it is time to properly store those supplies and organize them so they are ready for use and then it is time to actually get about using them. Actually work about getting the imagined thing to be real. Uh-huh. And that part, realizing I was definitely over my threshold, led to me saying I will only do four planned daylily crosses in 2026. It turned out that 19 varieties of crosses produced so many hundreds of seeds I was just counting the days until it was all done. And truly it is not done even now. I watch every day to see what new seedlings emerge, I document information on my voluminous excel spreadsheet, and soon I will start planting in the ground. But what I truly enjoy is exactly where the gardens are at right now. And though I know that learning and experimenting will always be there, I am enjoying having the “Someday When”. I like the slower pace, the early morning tour around the garden areas. I like relaxing on the patio, watching the veritable plethora of birds and bees and butterflies and dragonflies, and just enjoying the Now.
So right now:
The Weigelia is starting to bloom. That Weigelia looked pretty bad a few years ago. I have been working with it and this year it is looking great.
The pines are budding out.
The Ninebarks are going through their beautiful color morph sequence.
The stonecrop out front looks awesome right now but will soon “donut”. I am sure I will talk myself out of pulling them out again this year lol.
The Elegans hosta that was a tiny rooting from before we lost the 18 hostas last Spring is doing very well.
The Blue Mouse Ears are loving their new locations.
And the Pink Asian lilies are making an unexpected comeback. (Still forming bloom buds. More to come.)
And not just the townhome gardens are doing well.
At the historic cemetery the irises are mid-bloom. The yellow blooms first and then the purple starts. In 2023 they were in an old garden inside the fence and were just begging for a fresh start. I dug some, divided them, and planted them in an area that was grass but had “iris bed” written all over it. They are so fun now! Yes, we definitely did not add any mulch to that section this year. It is plenty full 🙂
Screenshot
Not everything is roses, though.
In the townhome gardens:
The 7-year-old South Seas self-seed daylily that only bloomed one year (last year) does not seem to want to come up this year. And I had 3 of the total 4 daylily crosses planned with it. Ouch. Only one cross this year? Really? We shall see about that.
The original South Seas daylily clump will need dividing and transplanting this year. It is starting to fail.
The Carpenter’s Choice daylily doesn’t look good to me, and although I had hoped to get self-seed and experiment with ploidy (a parent is a diploid), it may move out. If I am going to work with it, I don’t want fussy.
And, sadly, the stonecrop under the Linden by the pavers have gone the way of the disappearing hostas. They will not be replaced.
And working at the historic cemetery gardens is no different:
Daylily seedlings don’t do well there, and that was a loss of quite a few good seedlings.
Additionally, fall is not a great time to plant bare root purchased daylilies there. Most of them disappeared and it looks like they are not coming back – probably moles.
Today I will go over to the historic cemetery and see if the purple irises are starting to bloom en masse like the yellow irises have been over the past couple weeks. I’ll share next week.
For now, I’ll wrap up.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend, and if you are in the United States of America, I hope you have time to observe Memorial Day.
I am trying to decide if these are Malva Zebrina Hollyhock seedlings.
That would be an absolute hoot. They would be 20-year-old seeds I had tried to start this winter. Thinking it didn’t work, I reused the soil for starting daylily seeds. The daylilies are starting to very slowly pop up, and along with them, these seedlings.
We have a number of what I call “bouquets” in the townhome gardens. These evolved over the years, initially accidentally, due to small daylily fans or asian lily pieces or hosta corms accidentally being left in place and then rebuilding slowly over the years. This is one of my favorites – a hosta that initially came to our gardens from a tiny corm my Dad left out to sweep up at his place after dividing and moving his hostas almost two decades ago, a set of Asian lilies from some of our initial plantings, and an Autumn Red daylily fan that escaped digging out years ago when we divided them and brought them out front. Today they tell a story of a loved garden with a history. It is another moment when I remember, I can buy things at stores, but these have wonderful memories.
There are others, and I will share over the next months 🙂
Last year I was in a very transitional year. As part of that, my mind was full of new thoughts regarding the gardens. And yet … my mind was particularly quiet when enjoying a specific palate – peach and salmon and coral and melon. Pink, yes. Purple, yes. Cream, yes. Red as waves of landscaping out front. But something about that melon, peach, salmon, coral look was most peaceful. I saw it in the self-seed blooms from South Seed. It made my decision on what I would work with for crosses this year. Just Right.
This morning I was reflecting on how very much the gardens have come into themselves. And how much I did last year that I am seeing come together this year. And how little there is to do now that the plethora of seeds that resulted from my exceptionally active and creative mind last year are all planted. The gardens are Just Right.
And, quietly, I am wondering – did that big harvest of red pollen parent seeds that only produced one seedling – lol – turn out that way because, for me, one red pollen parent seedling this year will be Just Right?
Right now, the daylily seedlings from prior years are abundant, like wrapped presents, beautiful before the full “gift” is revealed. And the hostas and sedum and even the tiny amount of forget-me-nots I allowed to remain last year are Just Right as accents.
Absolutely true that my gardens are not static. Ideas are abundant. But the peaceful place is worth preserving, at least in large part. I think that is where the gardens have landed. Just Right, but open to a few exceptional additions.
Finally, it does occur to me that sharing will remain as a part of this new Just Right. As always, in pictures and in thoughts, but I am guessing this Just Right will continue to have bandwidth for dedicated results. And that seems very good to me as well.
This is what Sandy’s Corner looks like right now. I will continue to share that garden as the weeks go on 😊
Today I finished planting the 2025 harvested daylily seeds. It was so incredibly satisfying to refresh my pivot table after entering today’s accomplishments and see … no lines left. Hooray!!! It was an experience. A shall not be repeated experience. Way, way, way too much “fun”. But everything is accounted for and reconciled. Now we wait to see what nature does.
First fun story – After planting all the daylily seeds, I realized I have four labels/tags left. They were from a very welcome discovery today. I thought I was out of labels. And I was not going to buy anything more for the 2025 harvested seeds. I was cutting up the flat side of the plastic trays from the 4 pks of cream cheese danish, cutting strips, and using that for labels! So today, after finding the forgotten stack of labels, and using them, there were four left. A confirmation to stick with the “only four” crosses I have planned this year? I think so 😉
Second fun story – About 1/2 hour after I finished planting the rest of the daylily seeds and had put away all the supplies, we were sitting outside relaxing. In hummed … the first hummingbird to visit this year! It looked big and healthy. It hummed in, looked around, and hummed back out. It is May! The hummingbirds are back! You can bet the first of the feeders has food cooling down right now and will go out shortly.
And for beauty – The gardens look awesome. They are filling out so nicely. It should be a few more weeks and the Asian lilies will start to bud out. And the clematis out back are starting to vine so they should have blooms to share in a few weeks.
Time now for patio time – for long morning coffees, or a beverage of choice in the afternoon. Just sitting, chatting with neighbors, and relaxing as much as a gardener can. We can. With some occasional “let me check one thing” moments 😉
I leave you with another picture of one of the white squirrels, from this morning.
This blog has been a bit in coming. But today I made the decision.
There have been many days lately where I wrote a blog, went “blech”, erased it and started over. There have been others where I started on one topic and thought “blech” and rewrote until it ended up being another thing all together. Lots of time flew by, and that was ok. I was getting to where I needed to be today.
When I started this blog 8 years ago, topics flowed freely. It was fun. I had ideas stacked up for weeks. Words flowed so fast I was writing the blogs on my phone on the patio. But I feel like I have blogged about all the “fun, easy” garden stuff and although I have rounded a corner now into the deep of my daylily propagation interest, that is a bit in the weeds for a generic garden blog.
I did think about starting another new blog, with just daylily stuff. Sharing what I am learning, successes and failures and things in between … Unfortunately, I am also finding myself NOT doing things that are also on my path.
So, to today. We are in the book of Luke with our Bible studying, and today it was on Martha and Mary. And attitudes, and, even more importantly, priorities with our time and giftings and callings. Ouch! Gardening used to be a fun share, a blessing to share. I need to get back to that with the blog and reprioritize my time. Get back on my path.
So here’s the cool thing in the garden right now. The Bluebells Clematis is budding. Soon the buds will open, and I will share those too 🙂
And the one tulip? I fear Bunimous Rex saw it the same day. The next morning it was gone, with a few smooshed petals strewn about. Bunimous!!! 🙂
Susan's Daily Garden 