Lily Extravanganza 2

Orienpet 'Anasthasia'

Wherein, we continue last week's display of various Oriental & Orienpet lilies and some new (to me) daylilies.  Again, I'll let the photos mostly speak for themselves.  We begin with gigantic Orienpet 'Anasthasia' at right.  So fragrant! Wowsa!

'Baferari'

Baferari  is a white/yellow Oriental blooming for me for the first time.  A website describes it thusly: "Highly fragrant Oriental lily known for its large, 8-inch, star-shaped blossoms. It features pristine white petals accented by a striking pale lemon-yellow starburst, chartreuse veins, and cinnamon-colored anthers."

'Trahlyta'

I'm personally rather partial to the lavender tones of 'Trahlyta'.

'Indian Giver'

Both the name and the white-rimmed appearance of 'Indian Giver' tickle my fancy. 

'Double Pardon Me'

Pardon me, if I superficially introduce you to daylily 'Double Pardon Me'.  The red glows more when the ambient temperature isn't quite as hot.

'Rising Moon'

'Rising Moon' is an apricot and profusely-blooming Orienpet lily in my front beds that I added last Fall.

'Wisteria'

Going to finish with a trio of delicately-colored daylilies:  'Wisteria' (recurved and sometimes-lavender), 'Julianna Lynn' (the most delicate and pale pink blush possible), and 'White Formal' (not-so-white), all from my front bed.  Enjoy!

'White Formal'

'Julianna Lynn'

 


.

Lily Extravaganza 1

'Casablanca', 'Yellow Dream', &Orienpet 'Purple Prince'

 ProfessorRoush wanted to title this "Lily Porn 1", but the term "porn" is so over-used these days as a description for any collection of photographs that one can gaze at until they lose their soul. "Extravaganza", meaning a "lavish or spectacular show or event" is so more apropos, don't you agree?

The "event" here is that my mixed daylily and Orienpet lily border is blooming "spectacularly", beyond my wildest dreams, and I just have to show you!  So the next two blog entries, will be primarily visual and drool-worthy, at least if you can overlook the volunteer weeds and morning glory about to choke everything out.  I need to blog less and weed more!

These are all in what I term my "front left" bed, a cover for the brick wall of the side-facing garage.  There is no carefully-thought-out plan here, I simply keep planting lily bulbs here, for summer fragrance and color.  And, woo boy, did they deliver!

Some of my favorite daylilies are here; 'Beautiful Edgings' (above), which I believe is the most beautiful daylily of all, appearing to be surface-dusted with diamonds at times, and bright orange 'Alabama Jubilee' (left) to pop out from the crowd, and delicate 'Julianna Lynn' (next week!). 

Orienpet 'Robina'

The daylilies alternate and contrast with some of the most beautiful, statuesque lilies imaginable.  Oriental lily 'Yellow Dream' is one of my favorites and dependably returns and proliferates every year. I've added the white Oriental 'Casablanca' (last photo below) to this area, and a number of Orienpet lilies to this area, with the vivid pink 'Robina'  my new favorite.  

Here is 'Robina' centered in blooms of  'Alabama Jubilee'.  Are these colors clashing?  Inquiring minds want to know. I think they invigorate each other! 

Oriental Lily 'Casablanca'

I'll show you more of the individual plants and the overall in "Lily Extravaganza 2" coming next week!  In the meantime, take another look here at these photos and click on them to see the full photos; drooling is permitted. 

Baker's Daylilies

'Old Barnyard Rooster'

I think, today on Garden Musings, we'll just let the photos of  these 13 beautiful daylilies speak for themselves, borrowing, without shame, the meme of a fellow blogger who does a "Wordless Wednesday."  I captured these images walking along the border bed in back of the house all in about 20 minutes on a single morning (7/12/2025) as the sun rose. Which is your favorite?

'Prairie Blue Eyes'

'Timbercreek Ace'

'Awfully Flashy'

'Beautiful Edging'

'Storm Shadows'

'Big Rex'

'Blackberry Sherbet'

'Cosmic Struggle'

'Cream Desire'

'Joan Derifield'

'Laura Harwood'

'McBeth'

 

2022 EMG Manhattan Garden Tour

Today, June 25, 2022, was the Extension Master Gardener tour in Manhattan.  Yours' truly, as usual, was the unofficial photographer for the group, so I spent the morning taking 814 photos in 4 hours, and 720+ turned out to be pretty useable.  I'm pretty proud of the fact that despite the heavy daylily bloom today (and at least one of the 7 gardens on tour claimed to have 800 cultivars), I only took around a dozen closeups of daylilies.  Of the other photos, I've selected my favorite dozen for you to view, my selection based on what I viewed as the most "artistic" photos. Without further ado, enjoy.   Click on the photos if you want to see them full size.

The light this morning was fantastic.

I thought this was the best daylily picture that I took.  It's not the prettiest or most unusual, but I liked the way the leaf draped across the blossom.

One of the gardeners is doing a great job recreating a prairie meadow planting.

At the same garden as the prairie above, lived this good girl.

Sometimes, a little woodland serenity goes a long way in a garden photo.

I don't know who Rex and Bogie were, but this homeowner loved them very much.

I'm calling this one "Stairway to Heaven".   That blue Kansas sky just kills me.

Oh, the colors here are just fabulous!

Had a serendipitous moment with this butterfly.

Again, Color!

Is it an entrance or an exit?   Only the homeowner knows!

2021 Manhattan EMG Garden Tour

ProfessorRoush seems to have slipped comfortably back into his continuing role as the unofficial photographer of the Extension Master Gardener's Manhattan Area Garden tour, albeit with a break during the skipped tour last year due to the pandemic cancellation of the Tour.  I won't comment here on the folly of canceling a GARDEN tour in a time when more of the population would have attended then ever, but that's all rain clouds and opportunities missed. 

Most importantly, I had planned to share in this blog what I thought were the 6 best photos from this year's tour, however, as usual, I'm failing miserably.   It's fairly easy, among 609 photos taken in 4 hours today, for me to weed out all the pictures with identifiable people in them since I shouldn't/can't post people without permission.  And my best intentions to catch a bee in the act of nefarious nectar collection went awry several times today; it was cloudy for most of the tour and the camera shutter speed just wasn't up to catching them as a still life.

It is more difficult than I anticipated to choose the best from the 50 or so daylily pictures and the various vignettes of gnomes and garden ornaments and from the delightful plant arrangements that were everywhere.  Ego aside, many of the pictures are quite good, despite the overcast and early start to the day.  My goal of  posting six photos became a battle to narrow down from 50, and then from 20, until I settled on these 8.   Well, on these 9 if you count the last wanna-be.  Who, anyway, could resist this bronze heron sculpture at the K-State Gardens in the middle of the created wetlands? 

Every photo here is unedited, just as I took them.  Normally I would have cropped them for the blog, maybe removing some of the blurred green space at the top of the picture of the fancy echinacea at the left, and perhaps reducing their size, but I thought you'd like them in all their vivid detail.  Point and click if you want to see them larger.  I apologize, in advance, for the multi-megabyte nature of this blog entry, but most these days don't have the limitations we used to have on download speed, do they?  I hope not.

Trains seemed to be the "thing" for the day and model railroads were laid out at two of the 6 gardens on the tour.  ProfessorRoush perhaps didn't fully appreciate their contribution to the garden, but the many children on the tour certainly enjoyed them.   I just kept thinking, "Okay, that's cute, but after a few times around the track, what would I do with it then?"   To each, their own tracks, I suppose.

With the garden tour a few weeks later in the year than normal, the daylilies were blooming everywhere.   I thought the prettiest daylily photograph that I took was of the pair shown at the top of this blog, but for a single entry, this yellow and purple-eyed daylily was too perfect to ignore.  

There was plenty of wildlife in the gardens today, with one garden featuring a box turtle enclosure with a half-dozen unfortunately photo-shy turtles.  I couldn't share the picture of one owner calling to her turtle, and a soundless still photo wouldn't do the moment justice anyway, but I can share these two sister felines who were intently hunting and torturing a vole in a garden.   Their actions seemed to dismay the garden owner, but then, cats will be cats, won't they?

I loved this quiet pathway fork, lit by the Japanese Maple on one side and shadowed by the 'Forest Pansy' redbud that hung above it all.  I was quite captivated by the light coming through the multi-colored leaves of 'Forest Pansy' and so the tour will cost me in real monetary terms since I'll have to seek one out now.  This was a hard area to catch without people walking through it, but thankfully, if you can identify the legs of the two ladies taking the fork on the right, then you're far more observant, or intimately knowledgeable of these ladies, than I am.

I'll close with this almost-picture of the Monarch butterfly on milkweed.   When the Monarch landed within reach of my lens, fluttering it's wings as it settled for a snack, I was adamantly sure I was about to get the perfect photo for the day, the crowning jewel of my efforts.  For a brief instant, I was still, waiting for this beauty to open its wings so I could capture that instant of miracle, of life and ecology in a single picture.  And then a nearby bumblebee came in like a Stuka dive bomber and the butterfly was gone, beyond my reach,
before my reflexes could trigger the shutter.   Such are the disappointments that come hand-in-hand with these many glorious photos.  Maybe next year.  Or the year after.