We are garden ready. It is Waiting Time.

We are moving closer and closer into the “Do” phase of Spring gardening 2026. March starts next week, and although we will almost certainly get more snow, March also begins clean-up in the garden. Today is the last 2026 garden planning post. All that is left to share is my vision for the daylily garden I am starting up north this year.

I have been thinking about undisturbed old homesites, sometimes where the house is even gone, maybe the chimney and foundation are the only things still evident, maybe not even that, but around the homesite are sometimes daylily survivors. They found a way. No special care. Just sunshine and soil and rain.

I have been doing some research, and apparently older, more legacy, or historic daylilies do better as a whole than the newer hybrids in surviving without much care. That is what I am aiming for with the up north daylilies – not much care. So, note to self – don’t buy hybrids and bring them up north. (Sadly, many years back, I actually lost one of my initial Pink Tirzah bare root seedlings that way, in my epic fail first generation garden trial up north. Big ouch. Shall not be repeated.)

I am not interested in the orange ditch daylilies, but I am going to add a time tested, historic style daylily (Hyperion) to the townhome garden this year and begin the slow process of growing them from bare root to bloom, letting them self-seed, and seeing if I can get that self-seed to grow up north where they can naturalize. I know it will be a very slow process. Probably 5 years or more. But that’s ok. In the meantime, this year I will work on the hybrid seedling garden up north, planting the excess hybridized seeds from the Red and the Pink Tirzah cross, and see if they can make it. Those red daylilies are quite hardy. It could work. But my goal is to eventually get naturalized daylilies up north.

So now I wait. It will be a couple months until I can start the 2026 seedlings outside. I may start some indoors in trays after Easter. I did crosses with Naomi Ruth and the Peach daylily – both ways, as pod parent each and as pollen parent each, and that was very successful to seed. I may get those going indoors. But otherwise, it is waiting time now. I’ll share as we have fun things 🙂

Take care, Be Blessed!

We reflect. We are Thankful.

In early January, as our dog Sandy was really struggling, I started this post. As you know, Sandy now has his “wings”. Four weeks ago, today, he got his wings. We miss him dearly. We are so tempted to adopt another dog. But those days are gone. We are being called on to a new direction. Time will tell more.

Here’s the post from early January:

Well, the time for “cozy plus” has come. We are going to reach -21 F tonight (actual temperature, not including wind chill calculations). Now, I have been out in -40F with crazy winds where the prediction was wind chills were -90 F, and let me just say, challenging yourself to walk around in a college campus at 19 years old in that weather was novel. But all these years later, -21 F is “I shall stay inside” time. And to keep my deep winter sanity, my mind is increasingly wandering. You know – a flash of remembrance of a beautiful day volunteering, working on the historic cemetery garden, a flash of a memory of picking up mulch, a flash of a memory of seeing “Hello Yellow” for the first time of the season (last year “Hello Yellow” was the first, and the last daylily to bloom). Stuff like that.
So I am opening the gardening season, just a tiny trickle. Just to keep sane. I hope it works. (Going to TX right now is not an option 😉).

At the end of last year’s garden season I shared that in 2026 I was definitely not going to do as many daylily crosses as I did in 2025, and I was considering taking a year off of doing any crosses at all. I shared how much I was enjoying what the bees and birds and butterflies and wind already accomplish. I shared that I had a desire to go historic for a while, as well, and that I had located sources for those. That is where the planning left off. Since then, I am questioning if I will be able to start the historic daylily idea. The sources went crickets when I asked for availability. I did that specific ask because I saw conflicting information online, and, contrary to my grocery order when substitutions are minor, I want very specific daylilies with those orders. I did consider plowing ahead, and seeing if just ordering would work, but, honestly, I did not have peace about that. So – I am shelving that part of the 2026 plan. And that may be a good thing. I think 2026 is going to be plenty busy, and this rooky hybridizer is going to need all the capacity – energy and real estate – she can muster.

Likewise, I have a decision about another 2025 plan.

Last year I shared that at the historic cemetery there is a family site that was proposed for a garden build out. The plants were to potentially come from the main (fence) garden areas and would be perennial. I was reading about Quiet gardens and thought it was a match for the site. But as I started to plant, it felt very “off”. I will not go into the details, but I called it quits for the year. After discussion with others, the decision to call that work quits for good was made. I think it will be a maintenance issue, and I don’t want to create a weedy, confusing mess for future volunteers.

So, the new garden at the family site at the historic cemetery is off the 2026 plan, and the historic daylily buildout is off the 2026 plan (that one may have a 2027 comeback – we shall see).

And now I can plan the rest. Because I am definitely concerned about capacity in 2026 – regarding both my energy and real estate. Here’s why:

I harvested over 500 daylily seeds last fall.

Last year, from 2024 harvested seeds, I had over 75% germination and survival to planted daylily seedling.

With the exception of the set of three ‘Mahala’ daylily seedlings at the gate of the historical cemetery, which clearly had a digging incident, all the others survived to frost. From experience I am guessing 70% or so of those will survive the winter and re-emerge in spring.

In 2026 I would guess that of the over 500 seeds from the 2025 harvest, I will be very busy finding real estate for seedlings.

And last year’s seedlings will need to stay put,

and the 2024 seedlings may need dividing.

So, time to plan. And no scope creep. 2025 got outta control lol Shall not repeat.

In a few weeks I will put the 2025 harvested daylily seeds in the refrigerator for stratification. And then the season will begin.

I left that post sit for almost 2 months. I just wasn’t up for finishing it at the time.

Today, on February 26, 2026, our weather is gradually warming up. The 2026 garden plan is complete. And we are thankful for many blessings. We will focus on those and also enjoy a beautiful picture of the Red and the Pink Tirzah daylilies from last July. Oh, so fun! Hundreds of seeds from intentional crosses with those daylilies – with Red as the pod parent and Pink Tirzah as the pollen parent, with Pink Tirzah as the pod parent and Red as the pollen parent, and with other pollen and pod parents with Red and with Pink Tirzah.

May the daylilies bring many more years of enjoyment and pure beauty!

The year to start some daylilies up north

I have a lot of harvested daylily seeds from 2025. If even half of them germinate and go to seedling I will be in trouble in a few years when they start to mature. I have run out of room.

But I knew that last fall. I knew I had harvested 521 daylily seeds and did not have room for them. I knew I didn’t even have enough seedling boxes to germinate and bring them to seedling properly. I have been slowly, steadily, chipping away at a plan.

99 of the 521 seeds were self-seed from the historic cemetery, to be added back this summer. 78 of those seeds were from the existing Stella De Oros there. The Stella De Oro seeds will be direct sown in groups in that garden. I just don’t have capacity in the squirrel protected seedling boxes to germinate those. The other seeds I will attempt to bring to seedling in the seedling boxes, and then transplant them in late summer, as is my cadence. There are already other daylily seedlings I have added at the historic cemetery in past years, and they did pretty well with that method, considering that garden survives on just rainfall for watering. I have hope for another successful set of additions.

In a perennial garden a plan is needed to keep the plants healthy, not overgrown, and also always have a variety of interesting blooms throughout spring-fall each year. We are going into year 4 with the historic cemetery garden and year 23 at the townhome. As always, some dividing will be needed this year. The seedlings from years past should help to keep things interesting while the divisions reestablish. And the rotation will continue each year.

Just as I love working on the townhome gardens, I love working on the historic cemetery garden. It is a great pleasure to have made a beautiful garden to honor those who are interred at the cemetery, as well as delight the neighbors and passersby. But the historic cemetery is not either of our family’s history. We are invested in this community, but we are the first generation in our family with history here. We don’t own that land. We are not even community property owners there as we are at the townhome. Those gardens could be, or may need to be, moved at any time. They are part of my hobby for this snippet of time. A lovely hobby and a lovely snippet of time. AND, at the same time … it is time to plant our own garden. On our own land. Even separate from the townhome gardens.

It will not be smooth sailing. I failed before at a garden up north. It was a colossal weed patch ending fail from an over $300 investment. Back in the day. But quite a few years have passed. I have been studying the topography. I know the area that has decent groundwater. I know the deer have far more nummies elsewhere. A fence will be needed, for sure, and I already have some heavy-duty landscape fabric from my DIL to keep the weeds at bay. I am telling myself, “These are daylilies. They are hardy. This is the year.” Hopefully they survive. The other option is to feed the seeds to the birds lol.

Up north I will start with 80 seeds from the 116 that I have of the cross between the red daylilies and Pink Tirzah. It is the opposite cross of what worked to make seed for the seedlings I named Molly Cowles in 2025. I have a name in mind for the new cross already but first they have to succeed up north. It will not be easy. I am going to do direct sow just like with the Stella De Oro seeds at the historic garden. But I will grow the other 36 seeds (of that same cross) here at the townhouse, just in case. (Seedlings can be grouped until they crowd.)

And we will see. It just takes one to get a field full in the years ahead.

And with that, the rest of the 2025 harvested seeds will have room in our seedling boxes at the townhouse. We are a go. I have the pots, I have the soil, I have some chicken wire to cover the open seedling boxes and can easily get more. We’re set.

Time for spring!!! Yah, I know. Not quite yet.

For now it is the shamrocks.

And maybe I can bring this poor orchid back to life.

Be Blessed!

What about Hello Yellow in 2026?

Hello Yellow is a daylily that has bloomed the past few years in our garden at the townhouse. It is from seed I harvested but suspect I mislabeled. Despite multiple attempts to replicate that cross, I have been unsuccessful. I may continue to try to do that in the future, but I need to move forward. Hello Yellow will become ‘sdlg’ (for seedling) for now.

The Hello Yellow daylilies are the first to bloom in our gardens, and the last. It will stay. Absolutely will stay. And it needs some “puppies”. Hopefully 5. And a “Mom” for those puppies. You know where this is going, right? South Seas self-seed anyone? And a little story time.

Alert – Now this gets sentimental. In January we lost our last dog, Sandy. He was a terrier mix, probably mostly with chihuahua. We adopted him at 1 1/2 years old as a rescue. We were told someone(s) moved and left him and his girlfriend (April), who was a couple weeks away from delivering 5 of their puppies, roaming around the halls of the apartment. They were picked up by animal control and put into a foster facility with the intention of making them available as rescues. I had worked with someone who also worked with that rescue and told her that if they ever got a border terrier to let me know. I kid you not, we had a planned trip to go adopt another dog, and I got an email from my colleague about Sandy. Sandy came home with me the next day. He was very sad to leave April and the pups, but they were also ready for adoption and went very quickly. And Sandy bonded with me within hours of bringing him to our home. We had Sandy for 14 years. He was 15 1/2 when he passed. He had a very good, interesting life where he was very loved, and, of course, pampered.

Sandy was a very endearing dog. Super cuddly to his peeps, but very spunky with other dogs. It took a bit to get him socialized with our Irish Terrier mix. I ended up between them one day and got a tetanus shot booster as a reward. They eventually made peace, and when our Irish Terrier mix passed, Sandy became an “only”. Sandy had a short stay with our son and DIL where he regained his doggy manners through being reminded of normal doggy protocol by living with their dogs. Eventually he came back to our home and was our beloved constant companion until he passed this January. He spent a lot of time in the gardens with me, and I am certain this Spring I will feel that loss intensely for a while. Time does heal, but it is a bit rocky.

Sandy was a blond dog with Apricot ears. Recently when I was looking through my latest daylily catalogue, I was oh so tempted to order at least one ‘Apricot Sparkles’ daylily and plant it where he used to fall asleep in the sun. I have had ‘Apricot Sparkles’ on and off my wish list for a while. But I held off, not quite sure. And it finally came to me. I want to work with what we have here, from when he was here, and see what I can get with crosses between Hello Yellow and all the South Seas self-seed (peach/apricot) blooms.

I fully realize this is risky. Hello Yellow is an extended bloom daylily, and the pollen is often not cooperative. The blooms open in the evening. But this is a rest and heal year. 2025 was very intense and pivotal. A nothing burger year for hybridizing would be fine. So, I am going to give it a try, crossing Hello Yellow with our apricot/peach blooms from South Seas self-seed. With any luck, in 3-7 years, we will have an area called “Sandy’s garden” where he used to sunbathe – and maybe have 5 new yellow and apricot/peach crosses in that garden. THAT would be fun! And, if not, ‘Apricot Sparkles’ will probably still be around in the daylily catalogues.

Now, about that Hyperion? Historical. Fragrant. Matching the aesthetic I am more and more drawn to. Do we have a peach diploid to cross to? Why yes. Yes, we do! Hmmm. Getting closer to making that call. Setting the components for 2027 and beyond.

Have I mentioned daylily propagation is a long game? I think so 😉

Be Blessed!

The data doesn’t lie

As I wait on spring, and as I garden plan, I am looking at my data. Lots of data. Enough that I did a pivot table last fall.

The pivot table tells me diploids do exceptionally well here at quantity to seedling from hybridization. And specifically, intentional crosses with the Red daylilies and the Pink Tirzah daylilies account for 61% of the diploid seed harvest in 2025 alone. Since I have a fair amount of the same type of seedlings already in the ground from 2024 and since daylily hybridization is a long game, and I am not sure if I will even like the results when they do bloom, if they bloom, I think I can make some data driven decisions there.

I will not do intentional crosses with the Red daylilies in 2026. I will, however, continue to allow self-seed.
Since Pink Tirzah has not produced viable self-seed in our gardens, I want to test that out in 2026. Pink Tirzah will still be a planned pollen parent in 2026, but any viable seed Pink Tirzah pods produce in 2026 would be self-seed.

Those two diploid decisions alone should get me to my goal of simplifying to something more manageable at seed harvest time. Those decisions do not give me pause at all.

With the tetraploids, however, I am going to do something I may regret in future years. I am only going to do crosses with South Seas self-seed blooms in 2026. Egads. I know. But logically, I doubt I will regret that, as I really like the South Seas self-seed blooms I am seeing so far, and there are quite a few more I am expecting to bloom this year.

So that’s it. A simplified 2026, and one that pulls me farther down the self-seed path.

We shall see how it goes 😉

Kind of miss these, kind of not. Let’s stick with the South Seas self-seed blooms :)

Yesterday when I was reviewing February 16 pics, I had to do a double take at this one. What was it? Green in February in Minnesota?

The next pic brought more clarity.

That was not cement. It was the inside of a plant pot. And then I remembered. It was the annual big pot of forced daffodils. Here’s the story.

Forcing daffodils was super fun for quite a few years. Eventually, however, I “decluttered” that practice. And to be fully transparent, the progression was not solely with daffodils. I started with buying Watch ‘Em Grow gardens. That was kind of spendy, and the containers were cute but hard to repurpose. I decided to DIY and plant a variety of bulbs in large and medium pots for forcing. After the first few years I went to only daffodils because I was planting jumbo bags full of daffodils at the historic cemetery to repel moles. The leftovers went to the forcing pots and then got planted back at the historic garden in Spring when the ground thawed. But forced bulb stems often fall over in pots and don’t look so awesome. Last year they looked pretty bad in pots. As I planted them at the historic cemetery I decided – that was an era, and that era is done.

A few weeks ago, I was kind of missing the forced bulbs. I saw the pretty arrangements of forced tulips in a vase with the jute cord around the glass container at the warehouse store. So cute! I love that look! But rewind the tape – that jute cord is a mess when trying to wash the vase, AND I know I will never reuse that setup. I gathered my strength and discipline, reminded myself I can look, and enjoy, but also that I had already made a decision, last fall, at that same warehouse store, that I am done with forcing bulbs. To start buying forced bulbs in a glass container with jute around it that I will never reuse is a step backwards. Roll the cart forward.

Yesterday I enjoyed the pics from prior years, just like I enjoyed looking at the creations at the warehouse, AND I successfully stayed in my “now” wheelhouse. Where bulbs go into the ground, if I even buy them (rare anymore), and where worms clean the “containers” (dirt) hahaha!

The wheelhouse nowadays is mostly daylilies. And did you think I would pass up a daylily picture today? Not a chance 😉

Today’s South Seas self-seed daylily is another beauty. For my garden and tracking purposes I named it SS Light. South Seas is SS but SS is also Steamship (historical reference to ships that were prevalent during the time our area was settled). And when SS Light first bloomed, it looked to me like a light version of South Seas. I was ready to steamship ahead. It would definitely stay.

Here are three blooms from the same bunch (SS Light). I decided from the first bloom to also see if SS Light would agree to be a pod parent. Coral Majority was also blooming that day, and I could not resist. That established the cross with SS Light as the pod parent, at least for 2025. Two out of three crosses produced seed. I have a total of 10 seeds from those crosses. We will see if the seeds germinate this Spring. Fingers crossed.

Enjoy!

South Seas self-seed blooms Part 2

The farther I go down the daylily propagation path, the more curious I get. That is how scope creeps, but also how experience grows. It is a balance. I am finding my parameters.

As I have shared, daylily self-seed harvesting, planting, and growing to bloom is really appealing to me. I worked lots of years with large amounts of data, and am pretty comfortable with analysis, but nowadays I like a little bit closer to granny rocking chair patio relaxing. Thinking, always thinking, but closer to appreciation, and reflection. Specifically, closer to releasing things with volume or timing stress. Creative? Yes. Absolutely, but lower key creative. Helper creative.

The South Seas self-seed blooms pictured above are super interesting. Notice that the coloring is quite similar, but the features are quite different. They are from the same year’s harvest, but, because I previously stored self-seed all together by daylily type, not individual pod, the pollinator efforts and the conditions may have been different (or not). The resulting two blooms pictured above could have come from the same pod, different seed. They could be different pods, same day. They could be same day, different pods, different pollinators (butterfly, bee …). They could be same day but different weather throughout the day. They could also be different pollinators, different conditions, days apart. Oy! And I could track some of that, but why?

For hybridizing, I do much more tracking. And going forward, how much I am willing to track will depend on how narrow I bring the scope. 5-7 various types of crosses sounds really good to me now, but if I start to try to replicate certain features, or eliminate them, more data may be helpful. However, for self-seed, I am not the pollinator (gasp!). And doggone it, the pollinators are notoriously bad at entering their contributions into my spreadsheet. They do not identify who stopped by, when, or to which bloom(s).

A little more relaxing and just enjoying for these is the message and the theme. That balance sounds good to me this year.

I hope you enjoy today’s pic, and I hope you have a wonderful day!

While we Wait

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.

Enjoy!

Reassess

At the end of January, after almost a year of significant health challenges, we lost our 15 1/2-year-old dog. We knew that outcome was coming, and we were pretty aware of how much we would miss him. But it has been hard. He was our constant sidekick, and that included in the gardens. He was also our last dog. We have had dogs for 30 years as a family, and we do rescue, so they often come from tough past care and experiences. We loved every dog, dearly, but it is time to wrap up that part of our life.

2025 year was a pivotal year in other ways as well, and we are assessing other things now too.

In 2025 I went a tad much on daylily crosses. It is a lot of creative fun to plan the crosses, to see what blooms each day and do the available crosses, to see the crosses form pods and mature to harvest readiness. But mid-September last year it switched to “too much”. Last year I harvested 521 seeds, with 19 successful intentional (not pollinator) cross types, 17 of which were new. There was a lot of harvest related work, including storage work that went way too far into fall for my preference. And now, in Spring, I have 521 seeds in dry cold stratification. (More on that below.) Every single one of those seeds will require planting, monitoring to seedling, hopefully making it to seedling, and then planting in its 3-year home (to bloom). I loved previous years when I did much less. Last year was too much. So, we reassess.

As part of the assessment, I considered that, yes, gardening is my primary hobby, but it is my – hobby. And true, I added garden blogging 8 years ago, and last year I added historical research, but those are also hobbies. To keep at that scope, I am solidifying my decision, for 2026, to pare way back on doing daylily crosses. I will probably do 5-7 intentional cross types, as I did in pre-2025 years, but I want to spend a boatload of time just enjoying the gardens, including watching the pollinators enjoy the gardens. From there we will see where it goes. I do want to head farther down the historic path of daylily gardening, and I am still working on getting Flava (historic) daylilies, but if I can’t get them this year, that’s ok too.

Now for actionable info – As I mentioned above. I do dry cold stratification for my harvested daylily seeds. Yes, I am seeing that is not the currently documented best practice, but again, I am a hobbyist, and I am aiming for minimal complexity. Here’s my timing this year. On Feb 7 I put the 521 harvested (stored by cross, type and date) daylily seeds, in envelopes, in plastic bags, into the side door of our refrigerator. Super high-tech stratification 😉 In April I will plant some seeds indoors in trays, just because in April I get impatient for garden activity. However, the vast majority of my harvested daylily seeds will get planted in May, in multiples, by type, into medium pots, and the medium pots will go into protected seedling boxes where they will “sink or swim” outside. I know. Blasphemy! But this is the method I arrived at quite a few years back, and how I do this every year. Last year I had about an 80% seed to seedling success ratio.

More to come. As always, I will share as we go along 🙂

A White Squirrel, Our Dog Having Fun, Very Full Hosta Garden, and Asian Lillies in Bud

For many years we have had white squirrels in our neighborhood. True albino. We even took pics in the beginning and sent them in to some sort of tracking site.

This pic dates back to Jan 9, 2019

And for our June in January pics today I have a few. The first is our dog mid-stride, front paw tucked, up north last June 9. WAY in the back is the outhouse. The lanterns mark the way at night 😉

This next pic will not be a view we see again. It was the very full hosta garden under the linden on June 9, 2024. Mysteriously we lost 18 hostas between fall of 2024 and spring of 2025. We shall not focus on theories, but rather, enjoy the picture, and know that the empty spaces, where the hostas were, found new occupants in 2025.

And this pic is quintessential early June (June 9, 2024) in our back townhome garden – the peach Asian lilies still in bud, a set of tulip leaves fading (one looks like it may have provided a bunny meal at one point – nothing left where the tulip bloom was), and I also remember that hosta, where a leaf looks a bit eaten, was actually from being stepped on and crushed. Stuff happens.

Enjoy!

I hope you have a good evening!

Be Blessed!