Out Like a Lion

Forget hard frosts -- tonight we finally had seasonable weather for this time of year. That's right, it snowed.


I took the picture tonight with the flash, since the snow will probably be gone by morning (at any rate, the weekend is supposed to warm up again).

Flash photography is not one of my strong suits. And besides, I was out for dinner and drinks tonight so that might be why the composition of this photo sucks, but I like the way the snow turned out.
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Told You It Was Too Early

So, a couple of days after the magnolia started blooming, we got a hard frost. Bye bye blooms.


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Too Early!

The magnolia in the front yard is blooming today. It's about a month too early for this.


Most of it is the highly unseasonable warm weather we've been having. But also, we removed the big honey locust tree last year and this is the first spring we've had without it.

The garden is getting more of the sun that's there, and there's more sun to get. Boy is it making a difference.
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Early Signs of Spring

I think this is about the earliest I've seen crocuses come up in the garden. We had a very mild winter this year, and it looks like Spring is following suit.


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On Hiatus

Blog is on hiatus until Spring 2012.

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Backyard Bounty

This post is just to show some flowers that were blooming today in the backyard. Stoplight is blooming now. It's one of the few spiderform daylilies in my garden.

Stoplight



Africa is one of my darkest daylilies, with more of a reddish base than a purple one. This year it's not bad, but last year it was spectacular.

Africa



Nile Crane's ethereal colours (like watercolour) are enhanced by an otherworldly glow today that I attempted to capture with my camera. I'm not sure this photo does it justice.

Nile Crane



Here is a definitive example of Scatterbrain, a daylily whose stamens are attached to its petals.

Scatterbrain



And here's a couple of little Catherine Woodbury, probably the last ones of this summer. Or maybe ever, from this plant, as it gets weaker and stragglier every year.

Catherine Woodbury



And finally, some echinacea, which is also blooming right now, and looking good in spite of the long drought we've been enduring through most of July (broken by a rainstorm yesterday, thank goodness).

Echinacea



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Lots of First Blooms Today

Trying to remember the names of all of these is a challenge. That's why I love looking at past years' posts. It's an automatic method of research for my own garden.

For example, Woodside Rhapsody is kind of forgettable: just another purple daylily popping up in the side garden. Not Wayside King Royale, but I think the name is sort of similar... So all I do is look up daylily posts from last year and see which flower looks the same in order to jog my memory.

Bonanza



Woodside Rhapsody



Light Years Away



Alpine Mist



Coal Miner



Sunday Gloves



Trahlyta



Catherine Woodbury



Royal Mountie



Not all first blooms are pretty. It's not a good year for Light Years Away, a fleshy pink flower with a yellow piecrust edge.

Most well-established daylilies will hang on in a drought year, but some of my plants have been getting weaker and so the drought has not been kind to them. The nursery stalwarts are usually pretty good, but some of my choices from the daylily farm ended up being the runts of the litter. Not sure if I will see much more of them.

Ah well, that's how it goes. Win some, lose some. Of the hundred or so varieties of daylilies I have bought and planted over the last six years, I've probably got over sixty still blooming each summer. But counting things like that is an exercise for the end of August. It's too early yet.
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Hey, It's a Post about Daylilies!

Surprise, surprise! More daylily first blooms.

True Blue Heart



El Desperado



Ivory Edges



Purple d'Oro



Peach Magnolia



Mariska



Vanilla Fluff



South Seas




Finally, this is not a first bloom, but a "first appearance" (for me) this year.

Raspberry Swirl



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First Blooms and First Shows

Based on the (non) appearance of spent blooms, I can tell whether a daylily had its first bloom while I was away or whether today's flower is the first bloom of the year for that plant. With that knowledge, I can get back to my usual practice of cataloguing the date of first bloom for certain daylilies.

Here are today's actual first blooms, of which there are five:

'Sabine Baur'



'Siloam Doodlebug'



'Kwanso'



'Country Melody'



'Justin Miller'



In addition to first blooms for the year, there are some daylilies that bloomed today that were not blooming yesterday, so as far as the blog is concerned, their flowers are "new" here.

'Cimarron Knight'



'Lady Fingers'



'Russian Rhapsody'



Also worth mentioning is the fact that some of my daylilies (even ones that have been completely reliable up to this year) are starting to get sickly and produce inferior flowers. This makes me sad, especially Lavender Rainbow, which is hands-down my favourite daylily.

'Druid's Chant'



'Lavender Rainbow'



This next couple of daylilies are not sickly (although 'Mini Might' has seen better days), but are miniatures. A miniature daylily must produce flowers that are less than 3 inches across. Some of my miniatures are registered as such, but some, like Naomi Ruth are just sports, for whatever reason producing miniature versions of the regular flower.

'Mini Might'



'Naomi Ruth'



Chicago Atlas is, sadly, suffering the same fate as some of my irises. It has grown through the chain link fence (again, I must say, chain link was not my choice) and blooms on the neighbour's side.

'Chicago Atlas'



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Copyright © all rights reserved. All text and images in this post belong to 1-2-3 Go Garden! at kbgardenblog.blogspot.com.

Evening

Edit: Sorry I keep changing my posts, but I have this tendency to misidentify my daylilies, especially in the large bed. This time around I realized that the ruffled red I was calling 'Justin Miller' is actually 'Lucky Catch'. 'Justin Miller' has now bloomed and is more of an orangey-red and less ruffled.

I went out again this evening with the camera. Normally in July I would be posting once a day, with a few flowers each day to show as they put out their first blooms. With the timing of our vacation this year, the "usual practice" has not been possible. So here are some of the daylilies that weren't shown this morning, or that weren't open to their best advantage.

One noticeable thing about my flower choices is that I love dark daylilies. I seem to be on a quest for a reliably dark flower without too much red in it. My collection contains many daylilies that I have bought in an attempt to meet my requirement, with varying levels of success.

'American Revolution'



'Siloam Plum Tree'



'Wayside King Royale'



'Darkside'



'Bela Lugosi'



'Strutters Ball'



Cricket Dance is normally a very dark daylily. It's great for a flower garden, with plenty of scapes and a high bud count. It has one drawback, however, and that is its tendency to lose colour easily. Here is a photo from the end of the day. The petals look almost bleached.

'Cricket Dance'



But not all my daylilies are dark purple. There are many, many of them in my garden, and they come in almost all the colours that daylilies are available in. For example, the reds seem to be well represented at this time of year.

'Lucky Catch'



Ed Murray



'Persian Ruby'



'Executive Decision'



'Highland Lord'



Highland Lord is a double daylily that hasn't been giving me reliable doubles for the past couple of years. Today the plant had two flowers, both doubles, but neither of them fully open even as late as 7PM.

The remaining daylilies for which I have photos this evening are apricot and pink.

'Green Eyes Wink'



'David Kirchoff'



'Strawberry Candy'



'Spiritual Corridor'



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