It's a very cold winter day here in the Flint Hills and while I was searching my phone for inspiration, I kept stopping at the bright, the cheery, the flashy photos. Many of these were photographs of last summer's daylilies, still beaming the sunshine of July into the freezing aura of January.
I had saved the picture above of 'Southern Wind', a 2003 introduction by Stamile, for just such a blog-worthy occasion, however in true keeping with my poor-recording nature I had mislabeled it as 'Summer Wind, which it obviously is not. Mislabeled or not, it certainly catches the eye doesn't it. Every new daylilean thing that one could desire is there; the crinkly edging in yellow, ribbed lavender of the thick main petals so resistant to drought, the clearly marked throat. My 'Southern Wind' is placed in back of the house with a direct southern view, exposed to all the burning sun and southern winds it could ever desire.
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| 'Heavenly Flight of Angels' |
'Southern Wind' and the rest of my newer daylilies pictured here are not your father's daylilies, as the saying goes. I'm too parsimonious to pay for all the newest and brightest, but even the divided clumps of daylilies sold each fall as a money-maker for the Flint Hills Daylily Society suffice to show how much the field of daylily breeding has changed the "ditch lilies" into queens of the garden. I do supplement my cheap daylily bargains with the occasional commercial purchase as well. I couldn't, for instance, resist the aptly named 'Heavenly Flight of Angels' displayed on the left.
I described purchasing it and dividing it last year. A newer spider, the bright yellow is softened to perfection by the cream edges.
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| 'Sonic Analogue' |
I won't try to name the rest of these daylilies on this page. After some process of elimination and searching records, I could, and I've labeled a few that I'm reasonably sure of, but it would take too long today to label the rest. I'll just leave you here with these beautiful but long-fallen daylilies, in hopes they brighten your day as much as they did mine today.
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| 'Julianna Lynn' |
It's a very cold winter day here in the Flint Hills and while I was searching my phone for inspiration, I kept stopping at the bright, the cheery, the flashy photos. Many of these were photographs of last summer's daylilies, still beaming the sunshine of July into the freezing aura of January.
And pot-bound it was, in spades. I normally would divide a plant like this with an old serrated kitchen knife that I purloined from Mrs. ProfessorRoush for just such occasions, or sometimes, as I face a perhaps less dense clump, with simply a garden spade, but in this case I was not going to let pass the opportunity to try out the serrated side of the new Hori Hori hanging right there on my belt. A few quick strokes of the 6 inch blade and I proved yet another use for the knife and saved myself a trip to the shed for my previous implement of destruction. I might even surprise Mrs. ProfessorRoush and return the kitchen knife. 
We've been having some blast furnace 100º weather here, hot and sunny, but the beautiful blue skies that accompany the horrid temperatures keep my complaint levels down. Mama House Sparrow also does not seem to have any complaints, incubating these pretty little eggs in the cool dense shade of our 'Ann' magnolia shrub, about 3 feet off the ground. I startled the attentive incubatee Mom with my early morning weeding today, but she had returned to the nest the next time I checked, so all is well.
