S-H-O-P-P-I-N-G

About a week or so ago, just before the Christmas rush, I received a catalog in the mail from Floral and Hardy Gardens, a place I think of as "the daylily farm" -- even though they also sell plenty of hosta and heuchera, along with a selection of other perennials, most notably my new favourite Postman's Pride sedum.

The catalog is printed on light purple paper (a good choice, I think) and the listings are in 5-point type (not the best choice, I might add -- though my eyes are still young enough, for now, to deal with it, I am thinking that a great big magnifying glass might be a good investment for the future).

I am happy to read above the Hosta listings that Betty and Marv and their staff have been "exceptionally vigilant about the Hosta Virus X problem" and that they even requested four inspections of the nursery over the summer and came up 'clean' every time.

Most hostas are in the $6-20 range, with a few $30 ones, and a very few more expensive than that, like Iris Frazier, described as a "lovely plant" costing $45, First Mate ($50), Sharp Dressed Man ($55), and a rare streaked version of Ginsu Knife -- called, appropriately enough, Streaked Ginsu Knife -- for $120.

But hostas are not really my thing, not in a big way anyway. I have a few, but my garden is not shady enough to appreciate too many of them.

No, it's the pages of daylily listings that beckon me, especially the word "NEW" that appears tantalizingly often.


Betty's Garden in Summer


Photo belongs to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.


HOWEVER...

Those of you who have ever shopped for a brand new house or apartment will know what I mean when I say that it's not always a good idea to shop on paper. Square footage listed is always approximate, drawings are marked as "not to scale", and besides, there is no way you can judge the amount and quality of light in a home based on a 2D drawing.

So anyway, shopping for daylilies from a printed list, however descriptive it may be, is not usually the way I like to do it. Then again, the daylily blooming season is so short-lived, and January days are so grey and dull, that I will probably be spending a little time at the computer looking up images for listed daylilies to see if they catch my eye.

Betty warned me last August that if I don't want to be disappointed, I should get my order in as soon as possible, as most of her customers do their shopping between Christmas and New Year.

Well, I guess I should get started...

Winter Can Be Pretty

I don't spend much time in the backyard any more. But it's very pretty after a night of freezing fog, so I thought I'd take a photo through the upstairs window.


Photo belongs to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

Hope you are all enjoying the last week of the year.

Why I Collect Daylilies

Daylilies weren't meant to be a collection of mine. It just happened.

First, let me go back.

At key points in my life I have bought (and kept) style magazines that have influenced me years later in ways I never would have guessed. I mean, how could they influence me? I put these magazines away, and never look at them except when we move, or just move things around.

Not long ago I found a magazine -- I believe it was a copy of House Beautiful from 1993 -- which had an article about an interior designer who decorated her small Parisian apartment with Murano glass. Close to the back of the same magazine was an article in the gardening section about hybridizing daylilies.

The first house we bought had a garden, but no daylilies. (It did, however, have poppies, something else I fell in love with from seeing them in a design magazine.) These pictures were taken in June 1997, when we had been in the house for almost five years.





Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

It was not until we moved into this house and the garden had been landscaped that I thought of daylilies. And even then I did not think of them as anything but just another plant. There was a sell-off of some pretty yellow ones, called 'Moonglow', so I bought a bunch and planted them in the front garden.

I chanced to be in touch with a woman from my past, an old teacher of mine but also at one time she and her husband were very good friends of my parents. They were moving into a new house and she said one of the big jobs she had was photographing, digging up and repotting, and then labelling all her daylilies so she could move them with her to the new house. It was she who first mentioned to me something about a daylily farm, as there was one near her where she had acquired most of her collection.

Still, it was more like an odd fact that I filed away at the back of my mind than anything I aspired to. Until a while later when I really started looking at daylilies in the nursery.

After that, being already a collector of other things (Art Glass, for one) I naturally slipped into character when visiting nurseries and garden centres. I had to buy a few daylilies every spring, along with the beautiful foliage plants hosta and heuchera. All these plants are in the hands of creative hybridizers, so there are constantly new varieties to be aware of.

In reality there are a limited number of shapes and colours of daylily flowers, and many of them bearing different names actually look alike. But as with any form of design, hybridizing is subject to trends. (The current pursuit in hosta hybridizing is for a red-leafed variety. One that I own, called 'Red October', is one step along the way. It has red stems and petioles supporting green leaves.)

In daylilies, one trend has been lavender eyes. I have benefitted from this trend and have a few of those results in my garden. Some hybridizers pursue unusual shapes. Others want ruffled picotees with huge multicolour eyes -- which to me is the daylily equivalent of big hair, or a velvet painting of Elvis, but it's all a matter of taste: those are some of the most expensive daylilies being sold. Usually they are not cold-hardy and will only survive in the South. (There might be some kind of message there, but I think Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd already had that duel, and each has survived with their fan base intact. Note that this is actually a clever pun, since many daylilies reproduce by increasing the number of fans, and having an intact fan base would be necessary to daylilies, also.) Northern hybridizers are of course pursuing daylilies with attractive features that will also survive harsh winters.

Even though daylilies are my main horticultural collection, I do collect other types of plants, too:

• hosta


• heuchera (common name 'coral bells')


• hardy geranium (the true geranium; what is most often called geranium is really pelargonium, or 'zonal geranium')


• poppies


• sempervivum (common name 'hens and chicks')


• echeveria

I only collect echeveria in summer because they are not hardy through the winter. Last year I tried overwintering some plants indoors, but that was not really successful, and besides, now that we have a cat no houseplants would have a chance of surviving.

It's All About Me(me)

Ewa, whose beautiful garden in Poland astounds me, has tagged me with a meme.

Being the cynical blogger that I am, I had long ago given up on memes. But because I love Ewa's garden, I will do most of this meme. Like the chain letters that were their ancestors, however, the meme stops here. I do not perpetuate it, beyond saying this:

If you are reading this post and you feel inclined to write eight random things about yourself on your blog, consider yourself tagged by me.

My Eight Random Things:

1. Jodi at bloomingwriter, who tagged Ewa, was recently featured on Blogger's Blogs of Note list, and I was green with envy. Luckily for gardeners, green is a good colour.





2. Because November-to-March is a very quiet time when the garden is often buried under snow, I need a winter hobby. Last year I took the time to study and improve my photography. This year I have taken up knitting.





3. Until a few months ago, I did all my blogging on a PC. I am now the proud owner of a beautiful iMac. This is like returning home after being away a long time. The very first computer I owned was an original MacPlus.





4. In spite of my aversion to gambling and alcohol, my very favourite city to go to on vacation is Las Vegas. Ten years ago, if anyone had told me that would be the case, I would have smiled sweetly in their face and told them they were crazy.
   
   
   
   
5. Maybe one of the reasons I like Las Vegas so much is because I am a huge fan of the television show CSI. We even bought a board game, with collectible figurines.
   
   
   
   
6. Right about now, I am wishing this was a shorter meme, like maybe five random things instead of eight. But anyway, I think I have mentioned briefly before that I used to collect Art Glass. So therefore I never have a shortage of vases when I want an indoor display of flowers from my garden. (The only problem is, I worry about putting water in the vases in case they get ruined. So far I've been very careful, though, and that doesn't happen.)





7. I'm a bit of an appliance snob, and I like to have the best we can afford. We recently replaced our 17-year-old vacuum cleaner with a Dyson, and our washer and dryer with a set of LG Tromm series. We did not get the kind with the steam (because I'm not in the habit of dancing home from work and rushing out to party in the same dress) but the next model down, which has a moveable control panel -- handy when your upstairs laundry demands stacking appliances.
   
   
   
   
8. And finally...it has taken me all morning to write this meme, and I am glad to be finished now. I need to go and cuddle the cat for a while.
   
   
   Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.
   
   
   

First Hard Frost

We woke up yesterday to a hard frost, but the weather soon warmed up again (into the mid-teens, on the Celsius scale) through the day. I took advantage of pretty frost patterns to get a little creative with my photography.

Ankums Pride Hardy Geranium Leaves



Frosty Leaves



Autumn Buddha Head



Eco-Grass with Frosty Maple Leaves


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

Eco-Lawn Grass

The Eco-Lawn grass was a long time in coming to our garden. Originally, the landscapers gave us ordinary sod.

Newly Installed Sod in August 2003



From its first installation in 2003, until early 2006, the original sod in the "lawn patch" was fine.

Sod in May 2006



As the summer of 2006 progressed, this sod became weakened by drought and succumbed to insects, just as the grass on the slope had done the summer before. By August of that year the dry, dead grass was merely a foil for luscious weeds (well, the jackrabbits seemed to find them delicious, anyway).

August 2006: Weeds and Wildlife



So in early October 2006, we removed the dead grass and replaced it with mulch, as a placeholder. This was a new plan, taking over from the old plan of planting grass seed according to the "fat grass" recipe.

October 2006: Mulch as a Placeholder



We still weren't sure exactly what we would do come spring. We thought we might install a pond, but that didn't happen. I had just learned about Eco-Lawn, and decided to order some seed. The site said they shipped within two days, which was lucky, because it was already getting late in the year for planting grass seed. Uh, yeah. Everyone and their mother had just heard of Eco-Lawn too and ordered some at the same time. About a month later we finally got our seed.

Eco-Lawn Grass in Late August 2007



We decided to plant it anyway, just to see what would happen. It did germinate (the seed is known for fast germination, slow growth), but looked a little patchy. I have since surmised that this might be the usual course for this seed and it takes a couple of overseedings to get that lush look everyone craves in a lawn.

Lush-Looking Eco-Lawn Grass




After overseeding in September (the best time for putting down this grass seed, according to the web site), we now have the lushest, greenest patch of grass I've ever seen on our property. I can't wait until we plant it everywhere we still have a need for grass.

Beautiful Eco-Lawn


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

Yeah, I might be biased, but I think that that grass is just beautiful.

Blog Action Day on the Environment

Long time readers of this blog will know a few things about this garden:

1. We harvest rainwater.



2. We use mulch.

In Spring



Late Summer



And Fall



3. We compost.



4. Our garden is friendly to wildlife.

Skunks



Jackrabbits



A Turtle



A Daylily-Loving Frog



A Gorilla (Just Kidding)



And many, many others including squirrels, snakes, hawks, songbirds and other wild birds (bluejays, cardinals, mourning doves, downy woodpeckers), and that's not even mentioning the insects, both harmful and beneficial. So anyway, I think we've got this aspect of the environment covered quite well.

5. We've tried to eliminate most of our lawn. (This is a work in progress). Here we show a section of lawn replaced with eco-grass.

Eco-grass Earlier this Year (Looks Better Now in Cooler Weather)


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

So, when it came to Blog Action Day on the Environment, I really didn't have to look beyond my own blog for inspiration on what to write about. However, I did look at some resources offered on the Blog Action Day site. Here is some more information from treehuggers and concerned scientists that you might want to check out:

1. How to Green Your Gardening


2. Lush Yards with Less Water


3. Backyard Biodiversity


4. Make the Most of Your Mulch

Canadian Thanksgiving

In the garden I really have trouble with this time of year, when everything is so obviously shutting down and preparing for winter. Canadian Thanksgiving weekend has long been touted as the ultimate time for fall colour in our area. I think that is changing, and it's certainly not true this year. This year there is still an awful lot of green, and we haven't packed away the shorts and sandals yet.

The Last Echinacea



Although it is unseasonably warm right now (the high temperatures and humidity would not be out of place in July), it doesn't take much to remind one that we are not in the midst of the long hot days of summer.

Under the Deborah Maple



We should be enjoying crisp fall days, wearing sweaters and crunching leaves underfoot. Instead, stepping outside is uncomfortably like stepping into a sauna bath, though the evening light still fades at 7:00, and some leaves are still turning their autumn colours and falling to the ground.

Bloodgood Japanese Maple Leaves



Bleah!

But to say that it is all ugly would be misleading. Last year I bought a little caryopteris bush, and though it doesn't seem to have grown much this year (which is not surprising, since it the label says it stays compact), it does -- finally -- have a couple of blooms.

Caryopteris incana 'Jason'



And the hosta 'Red October' is living up to its name, blooming still when other hostas' flower stalks are crisp and brown and curling into themselves.

'Red October' Hosta



And some of the colour in the garden is definitely what you would expect of autumn.

Dying Heuchera Leaf



Climbing Vine on the Fence



Cutleaf Sumac


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

It would just be nice to wear long sleeves for a change, you know?

(I know. It will happen soon enough. Last year we had a snowstorm on October 12.)

Daylily Foliage

This post is inspired by Kim's Not in My Garden post. She says that she admires some blogs that show daylilies in the garden, but you won't find daylilies in hers because "daylily foliage leaves [her] cold."

First off, let me say that this is not a response in the sense of an argument or debate, where one-upmanship or formal objection is involved. Not at all. In fact, mainly I am writing this to express my surprise (think, incomprehension) at a point of view so different from my own, and yet equally valid. I guess it's sort of like dog people and cat people. Both can connect as pet owners, and yet there are fundamental differences.

I Am a Cat Person



Not to stretch the metaphor to the breaking point, it's time I got on with what I really meant to say. Which was, how can one talk about daylily foliage as if it mattered? With daylilies, it's all about the flowers. I mean, I could say -- quite truthfully -- that tulip foliage leaves me cold. But why on earth would that stop me from growing them when the flowers are so beautiful?

A Few Tulips in the Back Garden



Masses of Tulips in the Front Garden



As I said, the point of view is so foreign to me that I had to wrap my brain around it and actually start looking at my garden as if daylily foliage did matter. And all of a sudden I saw things a bit differently.

For example, my earliest plantings (before I became completely obsessed) seem to recognize daylilies as whole plants, and my instincts led me to create mass plantings, or treat a daylily as a specimen among hosta and heuchera and other interesting plants. In particular, I placed daylilies en masse under trees or beside rocks (or both), so that the foliage "worked" to some degree as foliage.

"Specimen" Daylily Spilling Over 'Tequila Sunrise' Coreopsis



Mass Planted Daylilies under the Camperdown Elm



Now that I'm completely obsessed, however, and any available space is space for new daylilies, I realize that aesthetically it's not working as well any more. I have plenty of planting space in my front garden, but not a lot of trees and rocks left to work with. It's all a big open bed. So much room for my daylily plants! But... what to do to make them work?

I Am Not Confident That This Is Working


Photos belong to kbgardenblog.blogspot.com and may not be used without permission.

The daylilies are fine in the full sun of the south-facing front. It's terribly difficult, however, to find sun-tolerant hosta and heuchera to break up the clumps of grassy leaves that daylilies present to the world for all but their relatively brief bloom time. And anyway, there is not a lot of height variation available in that mix (the three H's of gardening: hosta, heuchera, and hemerocallis).

So next year, I plan to embark on a bit of redesign.

My challenge is to create an aesthetic environment where daylilies work -- foliage and all -- within the overall presentation, rather than simply taking up space. Since there are no rocks and trees available to add variety, any suggestions for zone 5 sun-tolerant plants or small shrubs of varying heights and interesting* foliage would be gratefully accepted.

* Define interesting? Well, it could be variegation, deep lobes or no lobes, dark or bright colour, glossy or soft texture -- anything that contrasts with the smooth, spiky green leaves of daylilies.