Happy Labor Day! (In the US) The unofficial end of summer. Soon school buses will be picking kids up again, harvest activities will be planned, and gardens will pick up speed toward eventual winterizing.
But for today, we are enjoying some early morning time outside and I am increasingly enjoying the new daylily seedling bed. It is holding up well and encouraging me to get the hostas out of the other side with very similar exposure.
The last daylily of the season bloomed yesterday.
She is Tender Love, and has been added to my absolute favorites list. I would like a few more, but I am going to stay steadfast on my “no buy for the townhouse” decision. Things are far too unsettled. Maybe in the future.
Yesterday I also planted the new daylily seedlings bed. I have to tell you, it was a grunt it out experience and after it was done, I did not feel exhuberant. I felt a bit down. It was weird.
But this morning after it weathered a night (notice the hot pepper piece to deter diggers 😂) I am feeling much better about it. I planted the stunted coneflower in the middle to give it a year to grow. Then it can move, or not. (We have gotten a lot of donations for the historic cemetary fence garden. It is almost full.). But more on that in an upcoming post. Hint: I bought a bag of 50 daffodils to deter the moles.
I have one more potted transplant to get into the ground. It is a piece of one of the Elegans. I accidentally pulled it off when I was cleaning up a few weeks ago.
The two giant Elegans I was looking for a home for are eventually going to my Dad who is already making plans for them. Remember it is my Dad who got me into hostas? So I am feeling super good about them going to a loving home. He has space, and shade.
And I now have my plan to get more hostas more into the shade and more daylilies more into the sun. Next weekend. Because we are headed to 100°F this weekend. This girl has her water and watch hat on.
The seedling planter is off the patio. It will soon go back into the garage until next spring. The seedlings are looking more and more like daylilies and are in pots in the “pepper garden” area, with the lavender. Oh yes, and a stray sunflower. Doggone bird seed! 🙂
They will stay there until fall and then find their new home. Their new home will probably not be the seedling garden from last year, as that does not get as much sun as it seems they may need. Hubs got a bigger grill that casts a larger shadow, and I need that area for hostas that are burning – with the tree gone in front and the clematis removed in back. Change, change.
The hostas are also getting love this weekend. I have made the decision not to harvest any hosta seed pods this year, so the ones that are done blooming got a haircut. Here’s an example.
The bees so love the blooms, so I left the few that were still in that category. But soon.
Trimming the hosta scapes as they go to seed will help them preserve energy for the plant. Not sure that is needed – hahaha – as they are getting huge, but just in case. And I may divide a few, if energy allows. We shall see.
The second side of the historic cemetery fence garden also got lots of love this weekend – 32 bags of mulch. Lots of love from way more than me – WAY more!
Removing rock, pulling plastic, laying landscape fabric, sourcing mulch, which is rapidly disappearing. Incredible effort!!! It looks SOOOOO good!!! This picture doesn’t even do it justice. It just goes on and on and on down the hilly slope.
7 more bags of mulch are in storage – in the back of my husband’s truck, which he wants back haha – to go on that side, and then quits for the season there. Mulch is getting harder and harder to find, and $5/bag is not my jam. Hopefully, fingers crossed, the 7 bags will do it.
Next up for the cemetery garden is iris transplanting. But talk is not do, so I will wait to share on that til I have pics of the completed pieces.
I will wrap up with more daylily love. Yesterday the Purple D’Oro had 7 (!) blooms.
Today 3
Today South Seas is also blooming.
Yesterday morning also brought early morning bloom pretties Tirzah and South Seas.
And Just Plum Happy was, well, Just Plum Happy!
A couple interesting things I noticed in the garden this year –
This very healthy hosta has a small area of variegation. I have seen this in years past pictures too. i’m wondering if one of our bee or bird friends accomplished something new next to the existing hosta, or if it has to do with sun exposure. It looks very healthy. That puckering has always been like that. It also easily gets things trapped on the leaves – but that has always been that way too. Some snowy day in January I will have to do more research.
This past week I also noticed the Ivory Queen hosta has a few white blooms with purple veining this year. Usually they are all purple. My husband even pointed it out.
Interesting. I don’t mind white blooms but I am curious.
I’m guessing sun exposure may play into that one as well. That hosta gets a lot of sun exposure, most intensely in mid June to mid July. I try to shield it with lawn chair placement during that time but eventually I will swap it out. Just not sure with what. A daylily would be too vulnerable there.
Maybe a low growing sedum would do well there. Maybe one of the breakage rootings.
How fast the summer has gone! How fast the year has gone!
It seems like I was just waking up at 3:30 am, hearing the birds start to sing, going back out at 4 am to watch as the day began. So beautiful! Now, the birds start singing at 6am. The Cardinals love to sing loud and clear. It is all still very beautiful. Just less sun time. And that’s ok too. Rest is good.
Today’s picture is an early morning picture of the second to last daylily bloom in our gardens this year – a beautiful Marque Moon. She sits next to a bloom from a couple days ago, which I do not remove, as it may produce a seed pod. If that happens, it would be the first Marque Moon seed pod of 2022. Some years are like that. You never know.
Update – no Marque Moon seed pods this year. Each year is different 🙂
I am watching and waiting for the Autumn Joy sedum blooms to begin to turn color.
While I wait, the Chocolate Drop sedum and the Sundazzle sedum are beginning to bloom.
Soon the Autumn Joy sedum buds will start to turn, slowly, from green to pink to magenta.
We need some September color in the gardens. And Mums are not my thing 😉
Coral Majority has been in our garden for a couple years, but just bloomed this year. It is a super interesting daylily. The first bloom stayed partially open all day. I liked it – just was surprised. The next bloom opened almost flat, but it took all day, and that day had a late rain.
The “outside” of daylilies are as beautiful (to me) as the inside. When this bloom opened flat, the only way to capture the “outside” of it was up. And what a treat, to capture Cedar Waxwing’s seed pod in that process! I did not anticipate that 🙂
Cedar Waxwing was also in its second year in the garden here. Wow! I am pretty excited about the future of that daylily! In the “olden days”, I would have ordered a couple more Cedar Waxwings to accompany this first one, but alas, there is no more room at the inn. Although … there are a few fading hostas …
Nah, better keep a good balance.
I did try a cross with Marque Moon, but sadly, that one failed. The pollinators we’re successful though, so hopefully those seeds will survive and be viable and germinate.
We recently carved out a little seedling bed in the back of one of the gardens at the townhouse. Whoa! In only a week, the seedlings we moved look so much better! Location, location, location!
Queue the needle of the record scraping …
Location, location, location …
Let’s look at that a little more. As in a Sunday morning, into mid-morning. And see – is all of that space truly all a great place for seedlings???
The answer – kind of. They need a ‘tich more sun. Just a smidge, tiltling the seedling bed at an angle, which has been floating around in my analytical brain anyway.
Step one, remove a hosta. Not really remove. More like move. And then repurpose that space, for one set of seedings. And use a few other, sunnier, spaces.
The sun’s progression, in a variety of months, coupled with the sprinkler’s proximity, velocity, and trajectory. Add the need to move some hostas that are crowded and some that are getting slightly sunburned. More to come.
Is it sustainable? We will see. The longer I go, the more I know.
There are a lot of life lessons in a garden.
Susan's Daily Garden 