Summer's End and Daylilies

Good morning! I'm sorry that I haven't posted in a week, but the days seem to have gotten away from me.

It was so nice this morning to wake up to the temperature being only 55 outside, with little humidity. My neighbor and I walk each morning and it felt GREAT not to have to work up a sweat! So...naturally, since we are supposed to have days in the low 80s this week with cool nights, my thoughts are on getting my garden ready for Fall.

My favorite flower in the garden is the daylily. During the summer I cross- pollinated some of them and was blessed with several seed pods as a result. It is recommended that you chill the seeds for about 3 weeks in the fridge before planting them, and a lot of them came due for planting this weekend, so I was busy with that. Note, there are many good sites on the Web that detail this process, so I will not bore you with the scientific chatter here. It will be fun to see what I get when they finally bloom next year or the year after.

Of course, with Fall coming, I have been reflecting a bit on our daylilies when they were in bloom. Our garden is only three years old, but I have managed to accumulate about 130 different varieties, so here are photos of just a few:

I obtain daylilies however I can, whether it be from nurseries, garden club plant sales, divisions, roots, or by mail order. Some of the prettiest, however, are the wild ones that you see growing by the side of the road. I guess there is something so special about beautiful flowers that were lovingly planted so many years ago and managed not only to survive, but to multiply year after year.

We are fortunate in that we live in farm country. The picture below shows an old abandoned farmhouse a few miles down from where we live. You can see the house if you look really hard through the trees. (Sorry, but it was hard to get a good picture.) Were these flowers planted lovingly by a farm wife one day before she had to cook dinner? Or perhaps by her children as a relief from their summer farm chores? In May, my gracious husband assisted me by digging out a few clumps to move to our house. They bloom only in orange. Of course, you can see by the overgrowth in front of this old house that it was not an easy feat; we went out there with long sleeves and jeans, big shovels, and ducked poison ivy all the way! Oh, did I mention the bug repellent? Footnote: They are doing well at our house, but will not bloom until next year. Worth the wait, I daresay!! And hopefully, the person who planted them so long ago will be happy that some of her plants will be nurtured by another generation of gardeners.

Well, I hope that you are enjoying your day. Until next time!

Sue