Lily Daze

These are the days when ProfessorRoush stumbles out each morning and is dazzled by the sight of his tall, statuesque Oriental and Orientpet lilies, lured to them around the corner of the garage by their strong fragrance carried on the morning breeze.  My daily first chore of letting Bella out and making sure she attends to her business away from the house is much more pleasant while the lilies are in bloom.

The Orientpets and Orientals and Trumpet lilies bloom with the daylilies here, temporarily stealing the show from their more diminutive cousins, the former groups taller, larger, more fragrant, and simply more voluptuous than the latter.  One can look into these bountiful blossoms and lose oneself in their perfection as they open.  Lost too, you can become, if you breathe in that heavy perfume too deeply; it is overwhelming up close and cloying and some say almost sickening.  I myself enjoy the fragrance of Oriental lilies and Orientpets outside where it is diluted by flowing air, but one blossom inside a room can be too much for me.

I think of all these lilies pictured here as Orientpet lilies, but, in fact they're not.  'Yellow Dream', prevalent in the picture below, is just a tall and tough Oriental lily, while 'Purple Prince', pictured above, is a bonafide Orientpet cross.  The pure white lily here is perhaps an Oriental whose name I've lost, but I also have some "Lily Regale Album', a mostly white Chinese Trumpet lily with a very light yellow throat.  

'Yellow Dream'

As I view these lilies, I feel only sorrow for the unimaginative breeders who chose the name "Orientpet" for these crosses between Oriental and Chinese Trumpet lilies.   Viewing them, one wants a better name, more memorable, more intense.  Offhand, however, I can't do any better.  "Marvelous Lilies",  "Wondrous Lilies," Astounding Lilies" and just plain "Gosh Wow Lilies" are the best I could think of.

They're here and they're gone, fabulous flowers fading, browning and dropping and then the dark green foliage become merely a backdrop for the daylilies that outlast them.  Thankfully, they're nearly trouble free here in Kansas, untouched by disease, left alone by rabbits and beetles, and viewed as a moderate delicacy only by brave deer.   In my front yard, near the house, they're safe, but in the far beds of my yard the buds are eaten before they bloom.

What I need more of, perhaps, are 'Kaveri', which seems to be one of the least troublesome of all the bulbs I grow.  I'm still not crazy about the brash colors of this Asiatic and Oriental lily cross, but it has proliferated on its own and maintains a presence in my backyard even in the shade of a volunteer Redbud.  I'll give the glaring red-orange-yellow a pass, lighting up the shade as it does, but it still lacks the fragrance and elegance of Orientals and some "Gosh Wow" Orientpets.

Maybe, just maybe, I also should be less picky and more thankful for what survives the Kansas climate. 

  

Addendum:   And just this morning, fully opening after a small rain shower, the luscious watermelon pink of Orientpet 'Robina'.  The photo doesn't do this plate-sized bloom enough justice!

Pleasing Combos, Native or Not

A recent post by Gaia Gardener about nice combinations of native prairie plants was timely and I made a mental note to blog this combination, of butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) and catnip (Nepeta cataria) that sprung up voluntarily in my back garden.  This one is for you, Gaia!   I now have 8 or so Asclepias volunteers around the yard and I've blogged before about my accidental combination of Asclepias and a 'Fiesta' forsythia.   The catnip simply grows everywhere.  I fact, I weed out more of the catnip than I permit to  grow.   I wonder if the daylily in the foreground will bloom in time to add to the display?








Gaia's post also reminded me to occasionally look beyond the roses and view the rest of my garden, and while I was in a mood to appreciate plant combinations, there were several other combinations that were particularly pleasing to me at this time of year.   Here is an iPhone photograph of a couple of  recently planted lilies against the backdrop of tall, stiff 'Karl Foerster'.  I'm not that fond of "Karl", but even blurred in the Kansas wind, as it is here, it makes a good foil for the flowers.  The pink blooms intruding at the lower right are Griffith Buck rose 'Country Dancer'.








You should always assume that any pleasing plant combination in my garden is the result of a happy accident because, well, because that's exactly what it is.  I'm a plant collector by heart and I tend to plop down any new plant that tickles my fancy into the next open available spot, full speed ahead and ignoring the dangers of clashing colors and inappropriate size differentials and wildly differing growth patterns.  They can always be moved if they prove they can survive the Kansas climate, right?  Here, one of the more colorful lilies has opened up against the fading 'Basye's Purple Rose'.  The deep reddish-purple rose makes a nice contrast to the more orange-red lily.






It's probably now obvious that within the past couple of years, I realized that Asiatic, Oriental, and Orientpet lilies are useful to fill in the dreary period between the end of the first wave of roses and the cheery summer daylilies.  I'm seeing the payoff from planting a lot of lily bulbs into the beds the past two summers.  Here, a nicely colored lily blooms in front of a Yucca filamentosa 'Golden Sword', both in the foreground of a nice, light pink 'Bonica' shrub rose.

Soon, the lilies will fade and other accidental combinations will quietly bid for my attentions.  The next round of blooms will be the colorful daylilies against other neighboring plants, and then the late summer flowers such black-eyed susans and daisies will hold center stage, and finally grasses will become the focus of the garden.  And then another growing year, along with all its fleeting combinations, will be gone. 

Dampened Desire

In the middle of the heat and drought this summer, ProfessorRoush had an epiphany!  Surveying my dry and disappointing garden during the first week of August, a time when even daylilies were failing me, I realized that I was deeply in lust with the defiant Orientpet and Asiatic lilies.  When everything else was turning to dust, those intrepid bulbs were putting out green foliage and colorful blooms;  strikingly cheerful flowers, if somewhat smaller than usual.  It was the perfect collision of opportunity and need.  I needed more, wanted more, just had to have, more lilies.

So I quickly did what every color-hungry lily-deficient gardener would do.  I sprinted to the computer, credit card in hand, and ordered lily after lily, bulb after bulb, until my bank account was screaming under the strain.  Restraint didn't matter, my lily insanity had no bounds.  I was mentally eyeing the bare spaces in my landscape and visualizing a few gorgeous and gigantic lilies in every spot, each aspiring to stand tall next year among the roses, grasses, and viburnums.  I intended to shoehorn lilies into every spare inch between roses.  I was planning a lily blitzkrieg of my garden.

Now, of course, in October, my lily craze has come home to roost.  Long forgotten, the lily bulbs made a sudden appearance on my front porch this past Wednesday, just two days prior to a predicted bout of colder weather and rain.  Work and the ever shorter Fall days, of course, immediately conspired to keep me from planting the bulbs before the rains set in.  Today, Saturday, I stare out at a sodden landscape, a brief foray into the garden rebuffed by mud and wind.  To be truthful, of course, I have absolutely no desire now, when the roses are again in bloom and the garden is green, to go about planting several hundred assorted bulbs, most of them lilies that require deeper holes than other bulbs.  Oh yes, I couldn't buy a few bulbs here and there, I had to buy the Asiatic naturalizing mix with its hundred bulbs and the Orientpet mixture, and I threw in a few hundred Crocus chrysanthus for good measure and I thought that a few 'Mount Everest' allium's would be a nice surprise for myself next spring.  Needless to say, the thought of excavating several hundred holes in my rocky landscape make my arms and insoles ache already.

From the somber experience of previous overzealous binges however, deep down I know that starting the task is hard part, and forcing myself into the garden tomorrow will get me underway and the digging day will pass quickly if not painlessly, after that.  Once the deed is done, I can lay up for awhile with aspirin and hand lotion, ready for a winter's rest and knowing that drought or not, next year's garden will be scented and colorful in the face of searing summer.  Because I'll have lilies while the prairie burns.