Every year I save a few daylilies and hostas from the main cutback. Not many any more because, like I mentioned in my last post, I don’t like cutback with frozen fingers. 🥶
This year. I chose the ones in the pic above.
Is this not a wonderful fall daylily depiction? Wrapping up with their last bit of color 😊They just get fall-er and fall-er.
I think this pic deserves a print out 😊
The past few day I have finally felt like I have entered the land of fall in Minnesota. It has been a while coming. And there is a reason. But first –
The 2025 gardening season started out a bit tough, but ended very well – in a significantly different direction.
Earlier this year I shared that we lost 18 hostas sometime between last fall when I cut them back and when they should have been up this spring. Some were huge and all were very healthy the previous year (2023). In fact, I had offered two in particular to my Dad, and he was excited to get them. It was a bit disconcerting to have them vanish.
We have had a full spring/summer now to watch for any sign of the hostas to return. What can I surmise? The vast majority are gone. We will probably never know for sure what happened, but they are definitely gone. There was one that did somewhat recover. And there were two that sent up baby leaves that have endured. The consolation was they were from the ones I was planning to bring to my Dad. So that’s good.
The hosta losses were sad, but the daylilies were crazy good this year, both in bud and flower production, and in pod success. There are quite a few seed pods from self-seed but the vast majority are from crosses I did – hybridization. My tracking spreadsheet tells me I was successful in getting 21 different cross types to seed pod. That is a lot. And I have been feeling it all of September. I have come to the conclusion that the scope of what I did this year is not where I want to land next year. Here’s why:
I absolutely love daylily season. Head over heals, in my very happy place. But I also really love late summer and early fall in Minnesota. I like freedom to enjoy it outdoors. I don’t want to be spending a lot of time sitting indoors during that time, documenting daylily info and storing seeds, and I try to plan for that preference. Knowing that, and suspecting I had gone a bit far with making daylily crosses by mid-July, I made a conscious decision to stop doing crosses on the last day of July. I knew I already had a lot of pods, and that very few were failing, so I knew I would be busy, but I don’t think I fully understood the implications. On September 28, I am still harvesting, labelling, documenting, and storing seeds. And here is the twist – I have discovered it is not my favorite of favorite activities at the scope at which I am now doing daylily crosses. Additionally, based on what I have read over the past year, left to my own very curious and daylily loving devices, the work will only mushroom from here. Think exponential since I literally have already produced hundreds of daylily seedlings and if even 50% of the seeds I am harvesting this season go to seedling, I will be in a sea of daylilies. And 50% is not unrealistic. My success ratio from 2024 seeds to 2025 seedlings was much higher than 50%.
I have thought about this situation ad infinitum. I have even hinted at some ideas in my posts. The most appealing option to me at this point is to take 2026 as a self-seed only year. So let’s get the self-seed discussion out of the way first. I could harvest daylily self-seed for the rest of my life and still keep my fall seasons free for anything I want to do. Yahoo! Self-seed harvesting is very easy. There is no documenting until I harvest. I just enjoy the progression – the scapes to buds to gorgeous blooms. I watch the pollinators come to visit and imagine the wonderful work they are doing. The wind blows, different daylilies make their own crosses easily… There are lots of factors at work. None require anything but admiration from me. No planning, no overheating my brain with what pollen fertile daylilies are blooming that day that could be crosses with compatible pod fertile daylilies that are blooming that day. No documenting endlessly, first on my notes on my phone and then into a spreadsheet with 13 columns of data. The pollinators or the wind or whatever, do their thing, I see what pods mature, collect the seed, put them in an envelope marked xyz daylily breed-year, and I’m done. Maybe I add the count (how many seeds from that daylily type) to refresh my mind when I put them in the refrigerator to stratify and start planning for planting. I keep some and I plant some in other gardens. However, I do not have a say in what goes into that seed. But, so far, I have been delighted.
Hybridizing is a lot more work. A lot. I’m not talking just doing the crosses. Oh no! There is documenting, documenting, documenting from that point on, and then more documenting and labelling for storage. And even crosses of the exact same pollen to the exact same breed of daylily on the exact same day in the exact same bunch (just different blooms) can mature on very different days. Sometimes a week apart, sometimes more. And then when I do 8 identical crosses on one day, 6 on another, four on another, oh yah. The spreadsheet gets longer and longer with more and more of those red corner notes, where I try to put into words something that will make sense six months from now, when I have a question on what I harvested. I am not teasing when I say all that collecting and documenting and storing ate up a lot of my freedom in September. (I made 21 different crosses this year with multiple pods each.). But if I don’t do that documentation work, I get the mysterious “maybe” cross between Pink Tirza (a diploid) and Marque Moon (a tetraploid) that created something that looks pretty close to a Stella De Oro. And I, on purpose, do not have any Stella De Oros here, so … What’s worse, I can’t duplicate it and my other suspected crosses for that outcome produced no pods. Soooo. Document I do. For Hybridizing.
So, where have I landed? I have come to the conclusion that unless I go for a scope where I am selling what I produce, hybridizing is interesting work in small batches, but “not for me” at the scope I expanded to this year.
I know. Sad. But I will still do a few intentional (hybrid) crosses each year. Just at a much smaller scale. The scale I have enjoyed in previous years. And I still will have all the daylilies created up to this point. I just need to stop the mushroom effect.
The other option is to start a real daylily farm, like a business. And then I would be sitting at farmers markets, because I am not going to start mailing things around. The fact is, I am a gardener, not a marketer 😉
One thing is for certain, spreadsheet documentation is worth continuing:
Since I am keeping a spreadsheet for all of this documenting, and the beauty of spreadsheets is you can slice and dice data a lot of ways, eventually optimal options will start to come forward. Without adding new daylily breeds to my garden, there is a finite amount of crosses – diploid to diploid, tetraploid to tetraploid, early, mid, late season. I also have a certain palate I am looking for so that narrows things, which is helpful. Where I could get in trouble is the infinite number of crosses with new seedlings that bloom. That is where I will need to discipline myself.
So back to the start of the blog. The past few days I pulled myself together, and I allowed myself to get into “I am going to enjoy fall” mode. I spent a huge chunk of the days outside. I did some garden cutback, and I did some fall projects. I even took an old bird feeder and made a lantern using a battery operated votive. And I harvested the 6th to last daylily pod yesterday. The others have to be harvested by Sept 30th because the furnace and AC annual maintenance person is coming that day, and they will need the space where the pods are still maturing to be clear. It will be tight. Those pods may be a loss. No, I will not reschedule the maintenance appointment to save 5 daylily pods. I know. Sad.
For today’s pics, I cut my “landscaping” daylilies back yesterday. They were dying back, and they were obscuring the Autumn Joy sedum. Can’t have that.
Before
After
Oh, there you are beautiful Autumn Joy sedum! That I can propagate in weeks with cuttings and no documentation whatsoever. And have. A lot 🙂
Wishing you all a wonderful week ahead!
It took a bit today to finally get this blog decided on. There was “Envelope, Please” where I started to share about harvesting the daylily seeds, what was looking good for next year’s potential. There was “Very little left to do in the townhome gardens” where I had started to share the pre-fall progression for the gardens over the past couple weeks. There was “A snapshot of this ‘n that” where I had some pretty things in the gardens to share. All of those were started in the past few weeks and then left to sit. Our aging dog with a heart condition took a few continual turns for the worse, a family member got a very tough medical diagnosis, and the US and world news is … horrifying. Maybe things like this continually happen and we just don’t get a view to it. But it has all been heartbreaking. Praying about it continually, and then doing positive things has been the only way. Our dog is now on medicine designed purely to make his life as comfortable as possible. Our family member is undergoing extensive treatment. And the world, and us in the world, continually mourns losses, but most certainly with the hope of peace for eternity.
And we are still in this world, so we have work to do. And work we will do. Sharing beauty with the gifts we have been given. And experience. And wisdom. And sometimes, as other bloggers have reminded me today, just good old belly laughs. In proper time and measure.
So, for today, I will share a lot of thanks and praise. And some experience, and, hopefully, wisdom.
At the townhouse:
At the historic cemetery:
So today I am not going to endlessly sit in front of our tv watching horrifying things, dotted with advertisements for things I do not need nor want. I am not going to worry about things I cannot do anything more about. I can choose to use that time for more beautiful things, and still know enough to know how to pray, and for what. And that is what I shall do.
Wishing you peace ahead.
It has been a bit since my last blog. The daylily blooms have all wrapped up, except Hello Yellow, which is re-blooming. As I watch the bees, the hummingbirds, and the butterflies enjoying their journey through the hosta blooms in the garden, it occurs to me I ought to be doing the same thing – enjoying the late summer garden.
Yes, I miss the daylily blooms, but the beautiful hosta blooms and the very start of the Autumn Joy sedum color is also now on.
Since I last blogged, I have planted all of the seedlings except the seedlings that will go to the historic cemetery. The gardens are a sea of pods, very fall-ish. There are 55 pods maturing. Well, 53 as of yesterday when I harvested 2. I expect we will not have any true need to buy daylilies – for the townhome, for the historic cemetery, for anywhere – go forward. I may buy one here and there that I want for crossing, but even that is to be determined. When I was looking at my wish list from spring, I went ahead and deleted it because everything on that list was very similar to what I saw come up in our self-seed seedlings this year. I think I am good for now.
Full disclosure, another part of my decision to delete my buy list is because, sadly, a good portion of the daylilies and daffodils I bought and planted last year did not come up at all this year. It was a much worse scenario at the historic cemetery, but even in the townhome gardens I had a few “no shows”. That is very unusual for me. But so is losing 18 hostas this spring. It remains a mystery. We may never know for sure what the reason(s) were. But, I am re-doing the look of the townhome gardens due to the unplanned changes, and we are moving on. It might have been meant to be.
The new garden “look” includes continuing to transplant the Blue Mouse Ears hostas. I dug, divided, and transplanted a large clump of those hostas into their new spots, and I really like it. If there is time, I have one more clump of Blue Mouse Ears to move, but if I don’t, it can stay as is until next year. I also am seeing some purple shamrocks come up from this spring’s, shall we say, squirrel curiosity, ahem.
There are also a few daylily moves in scope. “Unknown Yellow Daylily Freebie with Order” out front does not like her current location and has only bloomed one out of the past three years. I have a spot for her out back. Yellow is not a large part of the front daylily palate, so moving it is a good decision on the color scheme, as well.
Which brings me to the Bluebells clematis out front – it is re-blooming. The hummingbirds and butterflies are loving it. I am very glad I saved the Bluebells clematis volunteers this spring and planted them out back. They are doing very well there, and I am guessing by next year the hummingbird will find those blooms too. The bees already did.
Which leads me to the changing color scheme out back.
This year with the “surprise!” of the red daylily seedling out back, I had some considering to do. I have thought a lot this year about the color scheme going forward – about what I primarily see from my favorite rocking chair on the patio, about how different times of the day are spent on the patio, and about what I want to head towards with future years of daylily crosses. These past two years of so much success with crossing the reds has been fun, and some of those, when they mature, will even be moved up front, but it was this year’s self-seed colors, and form, that was on my mind for the future of the gardens out back. The self-seed seedlings were tall, many were trumpet shaped, substantial, and I really like the colors of the ones with South Seas lineage. The front landscaping has a wave of red, but it has been on my mind to find a transition color from the front to the back gardens, where I want minimal red. I knew that one red daylily seedling surprise was part of the story. I just wasn’t coming up with the answer.
Then one recent night I was relaxing out in the back, for a while – sitting on my favorite rocker, watching the dragonflies, and a bunny, and the sunset, hearing the crickets and the tree frogs start up, and seeing the bats come for the mosquitos (farther out from the patio 🙂 ) while watching all the fireflies close to the ground. The word “quiet” popped in my head. Not the hearing sort of quiet, as the crickets and the tree frogs were singing themselves (and me) very happy. The “quiet” was a feeling. After I came in for the night, I looked up quiet gardens. Indeed, there was some good stuff, but not really a match for what was floating around in my mind – quiet color.
Over the next couple days it occurred to me – lavender is the transition color from front to back. It will soften the red impact. We have some lavender already, as part of different daylilies, and we have the Purple D’Oros that we can let self-seed again. The forget-me-nots and the Blue Mouse Ears both have the blue early on, but mid-July that color starts to fade. We need a touch of lavender that will transition the red in front, past the Marque Moons to the South Seas line out back. And with that, a lot of other decisions are now made as to where I want to go with crosses going forward.
For now, last night I harvested the first two seed pods. They were opening up quickly, and I am guessing I lost a few into the ground before I noticed. It’s OK. They are the reds, and crossed with Naomi Ruth, which did not germinate this year from last year’s seeds. I am guessing these won’t either as the seeds are only 34 days. Yes, it’s a bummer and yes, I will plant them next spring and see what happens, but decision made – next year I will trim down the number of crosses I do. I don’t need to cross the few reds out back. I already do red crosses out front. South Seas will be the dominant line out back, with both crosses and self-seed. Pink Tirzah will be the secondary line, and where I expect the lavender to come from, but we shall see. And if I just so happen to come across a Paul Voth, I might add it. Just one. I had one at the little house up north, and they draw the eye, for sure. But it would be my delight to do a cross that results in lavender.
So, what’s next, besides seed collection, enjoying the late season hosta blooms, and the Autumn Joy sedum colors? After Labor Day (US), I will plant the Mahala Felton daylily seedlings over at the historic cemetery and watch them for a week or so for water need. After that I will begin the seasonal cleanup there.
Lots of garden time left 🙂
It was a very fun weekend. After thinking and thinkng, and watching sun patterns, and watching how the Blue Mouse Ears hostas had done in new locations this summer, moving day arrived on Saturday. I started with moving a potful of the Molly Cowles seedlings into their home until bloom – 2+ years out. By then sweat was dripping down my forehead onto my nose, and I thought I may as well keep going. I really do need to invest in a headband lol. I took a hydration moment, and I made the choice – it was time to divide and transplant more fairy-ringed Blue Mouse Ears. According to my plan. Out came a huge clump. More sweat, glasses slipping, thankfully pony tail keeping my hair away from my face, the first division went into the “for sure” spot I had envisioned since May. Then another, and another. And then I dipped into more seedlings – the Coral Majority self-seed, and planted those. And a final baby Blue Mouse Ears division found a home. On went the cloches, on went the water, and then it was, for sure, time to stop. But I knew that already. I was feeling both exhilarated, and whooped.
This morning dawned more motivation, but for working at the historic cemetery garden. The yarrow needed a serious haircut, there were more hosta scapes to trim, and the milkweed was bending over. Plus some weeds. Not much. Our neighborhood weeders are awesome!!! And the mulch is rocking it.
I fight myself getting over there in the summer heat and air quality alerts, as I don’t have the luxury of the conditions of home, but every single time I go, I am mega invigorated by the people who walk by and chat and say thanks, and by the way the garden looks when I do my finishing walk around.
Tonight there was no dinner out with our newest grandson and the family and inlaws there, like last night, but there was corn on the cob from our other DIL, a burger on the Traeger, a beverage, and a very nice chat with a friend while the sunset faded and the fireflies continued their nightly show and the stars started to make an appearance. A very good weekend indeed.
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.
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!
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.
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 🙂
Today Tender Love bloomed for the first time this season. She is quite fragrant, and is a large bloom.
The bluejays have been visiting regularly. This morning I was slow to fill the birdbath so the visit was short.
And Red Volunteer bloomed for the first time in our townhome gardens.
I was anticipating this bloom after seeing how beautiful Red Volunteer bloomed her first year, this year, at the historic cemetery.
Susan's Daily Garden 