Simplicity and Sharing

Throughout the 2026 gardening season I had one main daylily goal – to collaborate with the pollinators. I focused on paring down on the volume of daylily crosses I did, and I trusted the pollinators to make awesome crosses. They did not disappoint. They have three successful self-seed pod parent varieties so far – Purple D’Oro, Just Plum Happy, and Autumn Red. Those three have been hard to bring to bloom from self-seed, so I am delighted to once again have the opportunity.

My intentional crosses have produced two new pod varieties this year. Both were retries that were failures in previous years. And then for tests, I had some pretty definitive results – all of them failed. I have one final test that is pending and that is a second go at Cedar Waxwing x Cedar Waxwing. Cedar Waxwing self-seed was my last untested option to see if perhaps it is Hello Yellow’s parentage. That effort, just like Hello Yellow’s behavior, produced a pod I pretty much suspected would fail, and it did. However, since that is consistently Hello Yellow’s behavior as well, to make a pod but have it fail, I tried one last test of Cedar Waxwing x Cedar Waxwing. If it, too, fails, I am out of ideas for Hello Yellow’s parentage and I will be done with that effort because … I have decided to go to all self-seed in 2027, and more specifically, pollinator created self-seed. I have loved the results, and I love the idea. Let the pollinators choose.

Part of the decision is also because I will have my hands full over the next few years, sharing. There are 29 crosses awaiting bloom in future years in the townhome gardens, and I want to share as each of those bloom their firsts. I also really want to start getting the historic cemetery garden more focused on historic daylilies. I have seen firsthand what a drought did to that garden this year, and the daylilies that are already there did the best, hands down. Now I am excited to see what historic daylilies do.

So, there it is. Although I know it will take boatloads of discipline to not do any daylily crosses in 2027, I feel super peaceful about that choice. And I am very excited to start the daylily focus at the historic site cemetery, starting with transplants of Autumn Red daylilies from my own garden this fall.

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!

South Seas and the kids (and some friends)

See which ones you think are South Seas kids that bloomed today.

I hope you didn’t say the Bluebells clematis that is reblooming 😉

South Seas is the 5th picture. The 6th and 7th are her kids, thanks to our pollinators, and my harvesting, storing, doing stratification, planting for germination, and then replanting into their various maturing places. I am starting to love self seed, and honestly, self seed will happen a lot up north because we have a lot a lot a lot of pollinators. A lot lol.

The first pic is peach daylily, with a pollinator friend who I hope didn’t already make a cross because I am hoping to successfully type and then cross Peachy this year.

The second is Just Plum Happy, and those are my husband’s favorites. We have several. That one is the middle child.
Just Plum Happy doesn’t like to play with others much. We have learned to let her relax and just be her wonderful authentic self. She has produced self seed offspring, but not with my help. Direct sow does work. Maybe it was me tossing it, maybe it was squirrels or bunnies or the wind or just gravity. Just Plum Happy will definitely have real estate up north. Probably not by seedling, but by division.

The third pic is red daylily. Red daylily and Pink Tirza like to make a lot of seed. Red daylily sometimes does this adorable thing where she curls her petals at the very end. Sometimes more as the day goes on. We shall see what she does today. I hope the kids get those curly petals. Hopefully not 4 years from now, but we shall see.

And then the fourth pic is Bluebells clematis reblooming.

Happy gardening! I hope you have a beautiful day!