New Daylily Bed

Well, with all the new (and a few existing) daylilies I have bought this year, I came up with a great idea to deal with the Eco-Lawn disappointment. We've made over the area where the grass was into a new daylily bed.

New Daylily Bed


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

Mr. Wonderful removed all the dead Eco-Lawn grass (that's right, it ALL died) and amended the area by double-digging in some nutrient-rich triple-mix. Then he planted the daylilies where I arranged them. (I'd have helped with the planting, but I'm still recovering from surgery, so I can't overdo it.) At the moment, everything is covered in plain cedar mulch, but in the spring I'd like to set off the daylily bed with black mulch. Also, as soon as it's time for planting bulbs, I will put down lots of tulips and daffodils among the daylilies so I have both a spring garden and a daylily garden to look forward to.

I haven't quite decided what to do with the empty area in front of the elm tree yet. I don't know whether to make it a focal point with a bird bath, statue, stone bench, or fountain (although the electrical cord to run a pump would be distracting, I think). Another possibility is creating a seedling bed there; however, I'm reluctant to use prime visible space for something where the results would be a complete unknown. It might be next spring before we truly figure out what to do there.

Anyway, one daylily I couldn't show you earlier because it didn't have blooms at that time is Coal Miner. Here it is now.

Coal Miner


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

This is one my husband picked out. He likes how the bright yellow jumps out of the dark purple. I must admit it's quite striking. Of course, I've yet to see any dark purple daylily that I didn't like.

Here is another striking pair. You've seen Green Eyes Wink in a previous post, but the white one is Tuesday. Tuesday was only registered in 2003, and there are not many photos of it out there. (Of course, try doing a search on the name "Tuesday" and getting a photo of a daylily. It's a difficult thing to do with such a common word.)

Green Eyes Wink (left) and Tuesday (right)


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

The thing about Tuesday is that it's a small-sized, ruffled and recurved beige-white self with what looks to be prolific blooms. It's registered as mid-season, but the fact that it's still blooming indicates that it must be mid-to-late, at least in this climate.

Oh, and in planting the daylily bed I had a bit of a disappointment. When I looked closely at Tang Dynasty it turned out to have two plant tags in the pot. The plant we picked up is not a dark purple daylily (as Tang Dynasty is supposed to be) so we have come home with the wrong one. I need to get in touch with Betty so I can fix this. Tang Dynasty is one of the daylilies I really, REALLY wanted.

But I'm not complaining.

Anything for another chance to visit the daylily farm, right?!
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Catching Up with Garden Stuff

Well, the other day I realized that I had one more daylily to show you that hadn't yet bloomed in my garden, Royal Palace Prince, whose first bloom was on August 14, very much later than usual for this daylily.

Royal Palace Prince


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

Yesterday we visited my favourite daylily farm, Floral and Hardy Gardens, to see what late-blooming daylilies they had available to add to my collection. Here is my favourite shot of the AHS Display Garden on site (although I took many photos of this beautiful garden).

Daylily Display Garden


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

And when I went shopping for my garden, there were so many daylilies to choose from! I was sad when it came time to pay for my choices that I had to give up some of them which the farm needed to keep for restocking. A beautiful healthy purple spiderform that would have looked lovely in my garden had to be abandoned at the till. But I still came home with plenty. Here are some of my purchases, waiting to be planted.

Some of My Daylily Purchases


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Here are a couple of blooms shown in a bit closer view.

Green Eyes Wink (New Purchase)


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

Stoplight (New Purchase)


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

I have what may seem like a long list of new daylily purchases from this trip, but this year I have made fewer trips, so over the length of the summer this is no different than in previous years. (Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

• Bama Bound
  
• Coal Miner
  
• Green Eyes Wink (see above)
  
• Ivory Edges
  
• Little Red Spring Song (blooms early June)
  
• Lucky Catch
  
• Spiritual Corridor
  
• Stoplight (see above)
  
• Strutters Ball
  
• Sunday Gloves
  
• Tang Dynasty
  
• Thomas Lee
  
• Tuesday (Klehm, 2003 -- no image currently available)

Other stories I'm sticking to: my husband and son helped me shop. They are the biggest enablers on the planet.

You might recognize some of those daylilies from a list I made last January. There would be more from the January list, but some I was unable to get on this trip because we couldn't find them, or they were sold out.

I also took the opportunity to pick up some more Postman's Pride sedum, and a new sedum called 'Xenox' which is a most intriguing pinkish-purple colour. It was a MUST HAVE for my garden.

Xenox Sedum


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

We have already started on the big rearrangement in the garden. Since the Eco-Lawn grass was such a nightmare we are tearing it all out and I am making a daylily bed instead. We have also torn out the overcrowded evergreens and overgrown shrubs (well, I say "we" but Mr. Wonderful did all the heavy digging -- I just chopped branches). A westward view of the maple garden now looks like this.

Garden Looking West


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

I don't know if you can see in the above photo the toll that the rainstorms have taken on the slope this year. There is almost no mulch left, and the water is starting to erode little channels through the dirt. Whereas normally in August we would say the dryness is killing the garden (unless it is planted with drought-tolerance in mind) this year it seems the water falling from the sky is damaging roots and leaves and killing off certain plants, while causing others to flourish beyond the means to control them. (Periwinkle is a case in point.)

Anyway, to get a better idea of the "cleared" look of the maple garden above, here is the same view at the end of July, 2006. You can see how the evergreens were already overcrowded at that time. Now that they have been removed, the garden has more room to breathe.

Maple Garden 2006


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

Oh, and just as a follow-up to something I said in a post about how the goldfinches like the sunflowers that have grown up around the feeder. I thought I would fill people in on what the goldfinches do. You see, to get to the seeds, they perch on top the sunflower and pluck the top petals off. This allows them to get a better foothold and bend down from the top and peck out the seeds. It results in a messy-looking collection of droopy, dismembered flowers. (It's totally worth it though.)

Food For Goldfinches and Squirrels


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

At this point, some of the flowers have now drooped so low they are lying on the ground. Along come the squirrels to solve this problem. They chew through the stem to remove the flower and then carry the entire flower off to hide it somewhere.

Personally, I wouldn't mind if it ended up somewhere in my backyard neighbour's flowerbed. Only because of what they did to my vine. (I'm just sayin'...)
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We've Got Stinkhorns!

Enough. Said.


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

EDIT: Hmm, maybe I didn't say enough after all. These things are weird fungi that grow without prompting from out of the mulch. They have a strange odour, an even stranger appearance (those orange stalks poke out of puffball-like "eggs" that emerge out of the ground), and they are really good at attracting flies. Just one big "Ewwww" if you ask me.
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My Hope

I can't believe I said that My Hope wouldn't bloom. Well, I can believe I said it, but I can't believe it bloomed anyway. Its first -- and possibly only -- bloom this year was on August 10.

My Hope


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

It's almost mystical, in a way. There were no scapes coming from this plant at all, but sometime around the beginning of August I rearranged the garden a bit and returned the Grey Buddha to its accustomed place under the elm (right next to the 'My Hope' plant). As soon as I did that, a scape appeared -- seemingly overnight.

However, this smallish yellow flower with barely a hint of pink is a far cry from the plant's heyday in 2006.

My Hope, August 7, 2006


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

One notable thing about the daylily My Hope is that it has a lovely fragrance. This is definitely a plant worth saving and I am planning on dividing and moving it to a more favourable location this fall.
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Garden Joys

I'm so happy that Highland Lord finally gave me a double flower.

'Highland Lord' Double Flower


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This daylily is registered as a double, so I was really expecting to see more double flowers from it than I got this year.

Other dashed expectations: My Hope did not bloom this year. Something knocked all the buds from All-American Plum. And my neighbours "trimmed" my vine from their side of the fence, killing the entire thing except for one small strand. In mid-July, it looked like this.

Sunflowers and (Former) Vine


Philosophical Karen © all rights reserved

The great news is that the sunflowers (seen at bottom right) are all blooming now. I left the sprouts from winter birdseed to grow into a large clump surrounding the feeder. I am really happy with the effect, especially now that the goldfinches are always coming by, landing on the sunflowers and happily pecking out seeds from the centres. It really is a joy to behold.

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