Spring Rain, and updates on the Seedling Boxes and Sandy’s Corner

This morning the forecast said rain. I was sincerely hoping it would hold, as the first wave of seeds are now going outside and some natural watering is always a bonus.

I was not disappointed.

Starting seeds indoors this year reminded me of why I don’t do that. It was sooo time for them to go outside.

Sandy’s Corner

The gardens are missing one little chihuahua terrier this spring and that is definitely sad for us. It is a little extra poignant because Sandy was our last dog. We have decided after 30 years of being rescue dog owners that it is time for that chapter to end. A new chapter is upon us, but our memories of Sandy’s long life with us remain.

We have such wonderful memories of Sandy in the gardens. Specifically, “Sandy’s Corner” is where he liked to sunbathe – on the path, on the grass right outside the garden, or, in his later years, in a dog bed outside the garden on the patio.

That garden area has also changed a lot over the years with the Linden growing and casting different shade patterns. And it is where our successive Traeger shadow has grown.

The area closest to the house gets the least amount of morning sun, and I used to, many years ago, have big hostas back there. Gradually over the years I moved those big hostas out and did more with tulips. But tulips around here only bloom a few years, and then they just come up as greens each year. Nowadays the tulip greens are primarily early season bunny food.

When I want to reclaim a space with tulip greens, I simply dig them out. Such will be the case with the tulip greens in Sandy’s Corner this year. I know the hostas work in that area, and I have a large hosta I need to move. It will be a nice backdrop to the daylily seedlings that do exceptionally well with the longer sun exposure farther out.

And the little garden accents, as whimsical as they are, will also move out soon. Their short-term job is to remind me not to put anything there. That is the corridor to the hummingbird feeder, and, for that reason, last fall I removed some daylily seedlings from that area. My husband maintains the hummingbird feeders – that we both love to watch, and which should not cause “fear of stepping on daylily seedlings” stress 😉 And no worries, the seedlings I moved are doing very well in their new location.

This sweet tulip is in another area, and it will stay. Hopefully the bunnies leave it alone 🙂

One spot that will not change is this corner. This is the corner in which Sandy most often sat on the path. There used to be hostas there, but when they began to fail, we moved them, and I reclaimed the space for daylily seedlings. Those daylily seedlings bloomed last year and are back stronger than ever this year (way more fans). They are in the right exposure.

There are also forget-me-nots in that area. I like a smattering of those, but not a mat. Last year I began selectively weeding those out after they bloomed (not letting them go to seed). A little seed is the perfect amount.

I will never tire of this. Daylilies coming up in Spring

And with that, it is Friday, and I am ready to relax. My husband tells me he is going to make his signature smoked nachos on the grill. My stomach is already growling 🙂

I hope you have a great weekend!

Be Blessed!

Turning the Corner

After months of watching and waiting, we are finally into outdoor gardening season 🙂

Top of mind this week in our gardens:

The Hyperion daylilies arrived and have been added to the garden

The Hyperion daylily shipment arrived, and they are now planted in one of our garden areas. I am hoping they do well in their new home here, and live good long lives as our most historic daylilies.
Hyperions are one of two diploid forms I am looking to work with. In addition, their cheery yellow color will definitely be welcome, and their hardiness and deer resistance is something I plan to test up north. That they are fragrant is also a bonus.
In researching how Hyperion daylilies do best, and look best, I found that waves, or groupings, were the recommendation. I did consider alternating them with the Autumn Red daylilies but ultimately decided against that idea in favor of a solid Hyperion wave.

The daylily seedlings in the townhome gardens are all up

This week brought excellent news on the daylily and daylily seedling front. We did not lose any of our daylily seedling varieties. Every variety that I planted in 2025 from our 2024 harvested seed is now up in the 2026 gardens. Additionally, all of the previous years’ seedlings (that have not yet bloomed) and the daylilies from seed (that have bloomed) are also all up.

The realization that the propagation work I started in 2017 is now an annual rolling new creation was … beyond a minor moment. I am very excited to be at this point. Besides personally enjoying the daylily creations, I am looking forward to sharing the resulting blooms in a variety of ways – blogging, caring for them in our gardens, and starting the daylily work up north.

The scope of this year’s daylily crosses in the townhome gardens

With all of the South Seas self-seed daylilies back up, and with Hello Yellow back up, my propagation plan for 2026 is waiting on one thing – 2026 blooms. That will be a few months out.
I would like to say this year will be the first year my propagation work will be exclusively with daylilies created from seed harvested in our townhome gardens, but alas, I will still be using one purchased daylily for this year’s crosses.
I will use one AHS registered daylily for crosses this year, and that will be Marque Moon. Marque Moon has been in our gardens for almost 20 years. It has successfully crossed with our South Seas daylily and now I want to see what it can do with the South Seas self-seed daylilies.

The daylily seedlings at the historic cemetery

While the established daylilies at the historic cemetery overwintered very well, the seedlings, sadly, did not. That, coupled with what happened with the purchased daylilies I planted in 2024 (very few came up in 2025), tells me the historic cemetery garden needs a more restrictive palate with primarily divisions from things that already do well there. It will take longer to fill the empty spaces with that approach, but that’s ok. Community gardens are a unique challenge, and different sites need different things. Go with the flow.

And with that, it’s a wrap for this week.

Here’s a few more early greens pics around the townhome gardens.

In with the daylilies is a clematis volunteer

And last of all, our mystery volunteer bush is probably a currant of some type. I will keep watching to see what it does.

Wishing you a wonderful week!

Be Blessed!

Sticks, Stones, Coffee Grounds – and Early Indications

The snow is finally all gone here. Even the snow from the “blizzard” last week, although crummy at the time, is gone. We are firmly in April, with some enduring March winds.

More daylilies are coming up each day, and all of the sedum are now up. It is better than waiting for Spring, but I am still having such a hard time waiting to get the seeds outside in the seedling planters. For now:

Annual Spring Cleanup continues.

The daylilies and sedum are getting their annual sprinkling of used coffee grounds. It gives them a little boost and seems to repel critters and slugs. Eventually the hostas will get the same treatment when they start popping up.
The sticks that fell from the Linden over the winter are pretty much all picked up and the birds are starting to sort through what we saved for them to make nests.
We are continuing to move back any landscape rock that migrated over the winter.

Hints of what may change this year are emerging.

Something that is surprising me a bit this year is that the 3 Autumn Red daylilies closest to the Linden still haven’t shown up. They should be up. The other Autumn Reds are up. The tulip greens around the Autumn Reds in that area are well up. I know the sun exposure very well in that area, it is perfect for daylilies, and they have done well there in the past. Last year their flowering, compared to the other Autumn Reds, was a bit lighter, so it may be time for a move, but not because of roots or sunlight because the Marque Moons are even more challenged with roots and sun exposure and they are up. Something is going on. I’m just not sure what it is. For now, it is watch and wait. We can move them if need be.

I don’t see any sign of surviving clematis seedling transplants. It was a fun, multi-year experiment, but it is time to move on. Surprisingly, for that area my mind is wandering back to a time when, many years ago, I grew huge (5 foot plus) Aureomarginata hostas there. I think, for that mostly shaded area it is time to go back to that type of easy solution. Something substantial like a large anchoring hosta will be a nice backdrop to the daylilies further out in Sandy’s (sunny) Corner. I think I have the perfect hosta, already in our garden, that needs to be divided and moved this fall.

I am also a bit surprised at how few Asian lilies are showing up out back. Sometimes they are late, so we shall see. Unfortunately, the area they are in is not sunny enough for daylilies, but I already planned to move more of the Blue Mouse Ears into that more shaded area this fall. They would be perfect next to the hosta transplant mentioned above. It would be great if the Asian lillies came up. They have been in the garden for around 20 years. But if not, that area will still look nice with the Blue Mouse Ears.

A final surprise is that the volunteer seedling berry bush from last year is back, and much stronger. I think it was a bird “donation” so I am not sure exactly what it is. I will let it stay for now and see how it fits in.

Speaking of birds – the mornings are so wonderful again with their full surround sound chorus, and over the winter we even added an owl to the mix. It is truly delightful!

And finally – the daylily seeds update. The longer I go, the more I realize – I am not set up to grow daylily seeds indoors. We have a moderate townhome, and I am not willing to store a lot of supplies. Definitely not grow lights and shelving for the seedlings. So … the daylily seeds I planted indoors are still not coming up. There is simply not enough sun and heat. I cannot wait to get back to the medium pots in the seedling planters – outdoors. Unfortunately, the forecast is still a bit sketchy yet to start those. We’re probably looking at another week, at least.

Other than that, we did a quick pass by the historic cemetery, and the garden there is starting to pop up. Soon it will be time to add the annual mulch topper. This year it will be a “daylily seedling additions only” year at the historic cemetery while I see how the daylilies shape up from the past two years’ plantings. Quite a few of the purchased daylilies I planted in fall of 2024 never showed up in 2025. I am, probably a bit optimistically, hoping they will make an appearance in 2026. We shall see. Either way, any daylily seedlings that I add to that garden this year will be self-seed I harvested from that garden last year, so that will be a fun “first”. I am looking forward to that!

I hope you have a wonderful week!

Be Blessed!

Sandy’s Corner

I have been thinking about how many daylily seedlings from the 2025 harvest I can realistically fit in the various gardens. High level, I am looking for space for whatever low volume seedlings I get from the seeds from last year’s harvest. Practically, I am looking for a way to enjoy groupings of the different daylily lines I have going.

Perhaps a 30,000 foot description on how I designed the gardens at the townhome would be a good idea to begin with.

In front, it is very much “landscape garden” style. Neat rows, lots of repetition. Not very creative, but it looks nice and uniform. And I don’t allow forget-me-nots out front. I keep it more formal. Increasingly I have also considered curtailing the number of crosses I do out front. It gets warm out front in the afternoons, and I much prefer to be out back at that time of day. I also have those same daylilies out back now, so in reality I don’t need to be out front doing any crosses.

Out back is where I have my actual “garden” areas. It is where I relax, where I have my coffee in the morning sun and where we sit out and chat as the shade begins to cover part of the patio. It is way more creative, and daydreamy. It is often where neighbors stop by to chat. And it is also where our dog Sandy used to sit with us, basking in warmth until the shade arrived. He so loved that. We will definitely miss having him with us there.

I have been considering naming the part of the gardens where Sandy most often sat, “Sandy’s Corner”. I am thinking “Sandy’s Corner” will be where the South Seas and Coral Majority self-seed and crosses will be planted go forward. Coral Majority is outrageously fun, and South Seas is very relaxing to look at. I like the idea of that combo.

I have a sneaking suspicion “Sandy’s Corner” will be my favorite look, and I will allow that to be the predominant results that remain in the townhome gardens, but we shall see.

As for the historic work, I am hoping to have those results primarily up north. Maybe some at the historic cemetery. Time will tell.

And the rest of the crosses, I think they can go by their parents. The forget-me-nots will be greatly reduced, but that is ok.

Take care! Be Blessed!

Seeds are started

Well, I was going to plant just a few 6 cell seedling trays and put on the greenhouse covers but I got a tad ambitious today. 84 of the daylily seeds are now planted. Still a lot to go, but it’s a start.

Today’s planting work was exclusively with the Autumn Red crosses. And 3 Autumn Red self-seeds 😉 I will stop there until last frost has passed. The bulk of the daylily seeds always get planted then, and that is my favorite way to handle the seeds. Then they go directly into the seedling boxes outside and get way more sun 🙂

It definitely was a fun day. An accomplishment day. It was also a very confirming day. Every priority and decision I have been sharing regarding the daylilies was reinforced.

My best decision, hands down, was all the research and documentation work I tackled over the past year. It saved me from a lot of stress today. Throughout the day I found myself thinking that if I had not done all that work, I would have been sunk. It was just way too much to go on memory and pictures and a few journal notes like I used to. The practice of ongoing research and documentation will be a keeper, even though it is extra work. The payoff is huge.

Secondly, I absolutely confirmed today that both the scope and the volume of what I did for crosses last year was too far for my ongoing comfort level. A stretch year, ok. I was still toying at that point with a number of ideas I have now counted out. I am not going to start a daylily farm lol. I am not going to ship daylilies around. I am not going to grow volume and sell at farmers markets – egads! No! Just No! Not at all me. So today as I was planting dozens of seeds from the same daylily cross, those activities went even further to confirm my decisions are right-sized and me appropriate. I now have a pretty good idea of what I can do with crosses between what we have – what consistently makes seed, which daylilies play well together … Now I am looking to see what I can do with specific crosses at low volume and then working with the results of those crosses and also the self-seed. I like to putz, and putz I shall do going forward 😉

Third, after I researched more on historic daylilies, and the intersection of what I like for form and color, I am super comfortable with where I am with the historic idea at this point. If I can get some daylilies older than Hyperion, that would be great, but I’m still also good if I don’t.

So, indeed, putzing is a great word to describe what I envision going forward. That, and seeing if I can finally get a garden going up north. I think if anything will make it, the older daylilies should. The Autumn Red seeds are planted. If they come up, some will go up. Little by little.

I hope you have a great week. We have plans with one of the grands tomorrow, so no Tuesday post. My next post will probably be Friday 🙂

Be Blessed!

Brunch, and then time to get the seedling mini greenhouses set up

It is time to start getting ready to plant daylily seeds. But first, the chef made brunch. Lots of vegies, and cheese, of course.

After that delicious sustenance, it was time to start putting the new seedling mini greenhouses together.

I have decided to decorate lightly for Easter this year. I remember all the work it was to put away the full “everything out” Christmas decorations in January, and I am just not in the mood for an Easter version repeat. Seedling trays will make an early appearance this year, where the ceramic Easter eggs would normally go. But don’t worry, we still celebrate the actual meaning of Easter, every day, in our hearts 🙂

One last look before planting wave one of the daylily seeds. These seedling planters will never be this clean again 😉

I will share as we go.

I hope you have a wonderful week ahead!

Historic Abundance

We are past our most recent blizzard, past our sub-zero weather last night, and now we are starting to see larger numbers of Robins. It is a wonderful moment on this St. Patrick’s Day, and I am hoping that Spring truly is beginning.

And so, after the long wait, with lots of computer time to keep my mind “garden happy”, we will soon be starting to plant daylily seeds. A few weeks yet, but soon.

While I waited for this time to arrive, I continued to work on the Historic part of what I want to do with the daylilies. I recently took the time to look up the introduction dates of our daylily inventory, spurred on by the discovery that Autumn Red is 85 years old. I found that many of our daylilies are technically considered historic. The AHS (American Daylily Society) classifies a daylily as historic if it is 30 years old or older. Most (all but four) of our daylilies are older than that, and some are quite a bit older. A large portion of our inventory has been crossed, which, of course means that my work with historic daylilies is technically much farther along than I thought. I still want to work with old, old, old daylilies, but wow! Now my mind is full. And I needed to know more. So, I dug deeper.

Along the way, researching parentage of the older of the historic daylilies, I also discovered that ploidy was often changed with a thing called colchicine. What in the world!!! Yah, I can write on that in another blog, but colchicine is responsible for getting us tetraploids, and since South Seas (a tetraploid) is my best self-seeder, and the entire focus of my 2026 planned daylily crosses, I then started to wonder – do tetraploid self-seed daylilies ever go back to their farther back parentage and then change ploidy, back to diploid? I know some of our South Seas self-seed results are pod fertile, and that they cross with tetraploids, because I did crosses and got seed. Whether that seed goes to seedling will be seen in a few months, and bloom years out. But this year I only plan to add four daylily crosses, and they are all from South Seas self-seed. Two of them are with Hello Yellow (whose parentage is unknown) gasp! And one is with two South Seas self-seed. Oy! What am I doing? And will I start creating situations where ploidy changes? I need more research! 😉

And that is what I have been up to.

There is so much to learn! I think I will probably be very busy researching until the daylilies start to bloom. That is a very good thing.

In the meantime, todays pics are holiday appropriate – shamrocks that I over-winter.

Be Blessed!

Skip ahead

Happy Tuesday! I hope you are having a good week so far!

We are definitely in the march to Spring. Last Friday night we had a good ’ole thunderstorm. Early Saturday morning we had a snow globe snow fall. Saturday afternoon the snowfall was well on its way to melted, and by Sunday morning it was gone. The snowplow pile from the whole winter is just a shadow of what it was a few days ago. And although we will have cooler days mixed in, and even some snow, Winter 2025-2026’s time is coming to an end.

Saturday was the perfect time to knock out some remaining garden questions I was hoping to resolve.

Over the years I have saved a lot of info from older versions of the gardens, along with lots of daylily tags (dozens). Saturday as the snow swirled around, I pulled out those saved treasures and started to sort through them. By midafternoon, everything I no longer wanted to retain was in the trash, and I was researching my remaining daylily identification questions.

As I went along, I realized some pretty great patterns were already established in our gardens. Things I had been doing for years started coming forward as additional pieces of the future plan. First up, the daylily I have been calling “Red” is actually ‘Autumn Red’. I bought and planted them, oh, probably 20 years ago. The packaging is long gone, but at one time I did a search by pictures alone and pretty much figured that is what they are. Saturday afternoon, after I had excluded all other options from my saved tags and data, I went on a deep dive of online sources and finally made the call. Going forward “Red” shall be referred to as ‘Autumn Red’. The curled petal tips, the yellow mid-ribs, confirmed a diploid, confirmed pod and pollen fertile, bloom size and scape height match, along with mid-season, diurnal, and rebloom. And it looks exactly like the pictures. Exactly.

What caught me off guard, and was kind of a delightful find, is that ‘Autumn Red’ is quite old. It was registered in 1941. It is 85 years old this year. Not hundreds of years back, but ‘Autumn Red’ is definitely not a modern hybrid. And, I am already a few years into hybridizing with ‘Autumn Red’, with 5 successful crosses to seed, as both pod and pollen parent in 2025, and a set of seedlings from a 2024 cross with ‘Autumn Red’ that I planted in our gardens last year. Now we wait to see those blooms.

I did those crosses on a whim a few years ago, proving out ploidy. That work turned into a pattern, and now it looks like hybridization with ‘Autumn Red’ is going to be the only path. Self-seed is most likely not a go. It is stingy on producing self-seed and I do not have any “Autumn Red’ self-seed that has gone to seedling. It does reestablish well from division, and I even have a note that I re-planted a single fan. I forgot about that, but it kept on doing its daylily stuff, and it bloomed last year. It seems “Autumn Red’ is great at making seed from intentional crosses and great at going to seedling from that seed if I stratify, bring the germinated seeds to seedling, and plant those seedlings into the ground in late summer. And so, that will be the ‘Autumn Red’ daylily scope.

Unfortunately, with that. I am now back to working to bring all of the ‘Autumn Red’ seeds to seedling before they go up north. Maybe I should dedicate the little 6-cell greenhouse trays I just bought to the “Autumn Red’ seeds. More likely, though, I will plant 20 same cross seeds per medium pot and whatever goes to seedling will go up north – minus a small sample for here.

As for additional results of culling through all that old daylily data, I realized “Unidentified Yellow Freebie” is most likely the ‘Schnickel Fritz’ I bought in 2020, and quickly planted, amidst a lot of other activity in our life at that time. Unfortunately, it is not at all what I was looking for, and also unfortunately, it did poorly last year. I think it is failing in its current location. Poor ‘Schnickel Fritz’ may say goodbye. I wish I had that money back lol.

As for “Peach”, I saved packaging from ‘Romantic Rose’, and that may be a match, but although ‘Romantic Rose’ meets a lot of the criteria of “Peach”, “Peach” is quite a bit lighter in color. That can happen, but I am not quite ready to make that call. We’ll see what the color looks like this year.

And, also unfortunately, Hello Yellow’s parentage will continue to remain a mystery. I definitely planted those seeds. I just have not been able to replicate it from my less than stellar retained data. But Hello Yellow stays. For sure. If need be, it can just be its pretty self.

20,000 foot view – We learn as we go. I have shipping lists and a plethora of tags that reflect my exuberant anticipation of a delightful daylily garden. And I got it. I just didn’t initially realize the documentation needs for the scope of the auxiliary hobby that evolved. Hybridizing daylilies definitely crept up on me. And daylilies plopped into the ground are great for enjoying. Not so great when life was super busy when you planted them, and your notes were hasty and sketchy.

I hope these shares are helpful, or at least fun to read 🙂

In the meantime, I am now only allowing myself 4 (not 5-7) new crosses in 2026 – until I get the scope of this daylily hybridizing thing stabilized. You guessed it – all of the new crosses this year will be with South Seas self-seed blooms. So, no new ‘Autumn Red’ crosses. And, in fact, no new diploid crosses at all.

I hope you have a good week!

Be Blessed 🙂

March “Gardening” Begins – Optimizing, Oldies Get One More Chance, and a Little Bit of Acquiring

March is here! Time to kick off the slow start to garden planting time.

Early this week I transplanted our 9-year-old, non-blooming orchid into a much smaller pot where it now is in exclusively orchid planting medium. I hope it works.

The pot the orchid was previously in now has some new “residents”. Some very old, harvested seeds from one of my previous gardens finally got to see potting soil this week. If they make it (which I highly doubt due to the age of the seed) we will have Malva Zebrina Hollyhocks in the garden here. They self-seed, so they are kind of like a perennial.

Then, in a good place after that cleanup work, I turned my thoughts to the next “to do” on the 2026 garden plan. I ordered 3 Hyperion daylilies. They, as I have mentioned in other posts, are part of the longer-term plan. They will be delivered in spring, bare root, so they won’t bloom for a year or so. That is perfectly fine. We will be patient.

And finally, although this next item was not entirely needed, and something I generally like to avoid, I am hopeful it is at least a short-term solution. As I continued to consider the volume of daylily seeds that need to be planted this spring, my mind turned toward optimizing some awkward space under support bars in the three new seedling boxes I bought last year. I measured the space, and I did a quick look online at options. Surprise, surprise, I found a good option at a good price. I made the purchase. The small 6 cell “greenhouses” will be putzy to plant, and that type of seed starting is not the norm for me, but you never know – those little seedling trays may be incredible.

And talk about incredible – as I wrote this post, the grill master was also at work. Yes, it was as delicious as it looks 😉

Be Blessed!

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!