Edged Wonders

'Storm Shadows'

It is quite definitely Daylily Season, and ProfessorRoush is both enjoying the show and lamenting his poor records.   As usual, my maps are only approximate, even though I thought them precise, or names were lost on planting or moving, so in this blog entry, I can be reasonably sure of about half of these daylilies.   Regardless, as I've noted before, the daylilies that I may have liked one year are not so appealing the next and I often have a set of similar favorites in a given year.   One year apricots, the next reds, the next light yellows, and so on.  This year, it's the edged daylilies that are drawing me in.

'Cosmic Struggle'

I'm reasonably sure of 'Storm Shadows' and 'Cosmic Struggle' and 'Bubblegum Delicious' here, but I'd be hard-pressed to tell one from another without the map.  'Storm Shadows' (Mitchell-K, 2004) has an incredibly thick ruffled cream-yellow edge and it holds up well in the heat. 'Cosmic Struggle' (Emmerich, 2009) opens early, but seems to be spotted easily by rain and it tears in high winds.  

'Bubblegum Delicious'

'Bubblegum Delicious' (Mitchell-K, 2009) was a solo purchase I made at a local nursery, so it was easier to keep track of (and more likely correctly labeled), than the inexpensive fans from the local annual Daylily Society sale.

'Popcorn Pete'?  Nope it's 'Vatican City'

I'm much less sure of 'Popcorn Pete' (later correction, it's 'Vatican City') and 'Bestseller' and 'Indian Giver', however.   My notes on 'Bestseller' are actually just an entry that I once held it in my hand and an "I don't remember where I planted it" statement.  Each is in the general vicinity of where I think I planted it, and each vaguely resembles the internet pictures of the flower, but I'm certainly not an expert at daylily identification.  Sometimes neither are the experts, because 'Bestseller' is of unknown providence to everyone.  I'd be more sure of 'Indian Giver' if one of its many descriptions would talk about the petals being "recurved."  I do wonder what's eating the petals of 'Popcorn Pete', however.   I haven't seen the Japanese Beetles bother my daylilies yet.

'Best Seller'?

'Indian Giver'?

'Mulberry Frosted Edges'

There are two unedged daylilies I'm going to show you just because they're especially beautiful right now.  'Mulberry Frosted Edges' (Hansen, 2000) is a nice, large, showy daylily with lots of character and, bonus, I'm reasonably certain of it's identity.   Her white edge is often understated in my garden, but I love the lilac halo around the golden throat.  

'Laura Harwood'

'Laura Harwood' is a treat that can't be mistaken for nearly anything else, so I'm quite sure of Laura.  She's a show piece, 5-9 blooms of 7" diameter coming each day on a nice compact healthy plant.  Hybridized by Harwood in 1997, 'Laura Harwood' is a keeper, one of those daylilies that I've already determined will eventually move with me to retirement.   I've got a list of plants for that, a special list kept in my head for a small garden to grow old with.   Provided that the Good Lord gives me that gift of growing old with a smaller garden, of course.  

Red, White, and Blue all over

On this Fourth of July, in the year of Our Lord 2023, ProfessorRoush is going to let the pictures (mostly) speak  for themselves.   I went out to take just one photo of each color, hoping that I'd have anything blue blooming at all, and I was yet overwhelmed by the abundance of red, white, and blue in a garden now brimming over with oranges and yellows from the daylilies.  Okay, I cheated a little on the blue since most of the species that are currently blooming with blue flowers are native plants; all weeds in my garden.   My apologies to my British readers for the insufferable reminder of the loss of your colonies.  Warning,  picture heavy!  

First the Red:

Pelargonium potted in front of the house

'Spiderman' Daylily

Hybrid Rugosa 'Linda Campbell'

Canadian Rose 'Hope for Humanity'

Then the White:

Phlox 'David'

Shasta Daisy 'Alaska'

The impossibly delicate Argemone polyanthemos,
 or Prickly Poppy

Rose 'Marie Bugnet', not at her best

Hibiscus syriacus 'Notwooodtwo' 

Hydranga paniculata

And last, but not least, the Blue:

Clematis 'Romona'

Salvia azurea; Blue Sage
Nothing is bluer!

Hisbiscus syriacus 'Blue Bird'

My nemesis; Commelina communis

Fringe-Leaf Ruellia; Ruellia humilis

Not bad, eh?   Not bad at all for a garden that currently is dominated  by daylilies and looks like this everywhere:

  HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY TO ALL!

Weather Woes and Wrong Roses

I realize it may be often boring when ProfessorRoush complains about the lack of rain in Kansas in the summer, but bear with me a minute, and I'll let you feel a bit of my pain, and then I'll throw in a gorgeous gratuitous rose picture to end on today on a (semi)-high note.   Down and up, your emotions on a never-ending rollercoaster along with my Kansas blog.

Frustration, thy name is moisture.   Necessary and welcome whenever, wetness in this area of the country is a gift, a blessing from the sky however and whenever it comes.  I'm at the point of happily accepting the 80 mph winds and hailstorms and occasional sheltering in the basement as long as it brings rain.   Since May 30th, we had not any rain in this area, a period of drought that denied daylilies and blackberries any chance for full development.

Worst of all, my weather app had promised a decent chance of rain every day this past 10 days.  You would logically think that if there was a 30% chance of rain each day, it would rain one day in every three, correct?   Well, in Manhattan Kansas, that logic doesn't compute.   Oh, it rained on most days, it just rained all around us.   After watching storms last week go around us, I started snapping screenshots of the radar this week for proof.   I'm the blue dot in these shots, and the top photo is Tuesday, the second Thursday (flooding north, nothing on us), and this one at right is Friday morning.   My weather app actually said it was sprinkling here Friday as I screenshot the radar.   I evidently need a new weather app.   Or my weather app needs to learn from its poor performance and improve.

Finally, Friday night this storm at the left developed in early evening and held true for a half inch of rain and then a second storm rolled over in the middle of the night and laid down another 1.5 inches.   Saturday morning I could almost hear my buffalograss applauding as I stepped outside.   I've now skipped two days of watering new roses and I think the browning grass is already greening up.  If there's a bright side to the drought, the lawn didn't grow at all last week and so I can skip a week of mowing.   That radar-imaged storm you see pictured at the left looked like this as it moved in: 

Doesn't that look beautiful?   I considered dancing naked in the rain, but realized the neighbors might talk.

In other news, I do have a number of new roses growing this summer, courtesy of the Home Depot "Minor Miracle" that I wrote about earlier and this one is one of the new ones, a fabulous florescent orange-red semi-double that screams "watch me" in a exhibitionist display of pride.  On the downside, I don't know what variety it really is.  Two of the labeled Home Depot 'Hope for Humanity' roses look like this and they're obviously not 'Hope for Humanity'.   My best guess is that I now have two 'Morden Fireglow', although the foliage seems more glossy than I remember that rose.  In its favor, the stems are red like 'Morden Fireglow' and the color is so unique, it is hard for it to be anything else.  Certainly, this isn't a reborn 'Tropicana' and time and winter hardiness may reveal its secret identity.   Of similar concern is that the labeled 'Rugelda' I purchased appears to be a 'Hope for Humanity' instead.  The 'Morden Sunrise' and 'Zephirine Drouhin' seem correct, so they're not all labeled wrong, but 'John Cabot' hasn't bloomed and isn't acting like a climber.  Who knows what I've got?

I said I would end on a (semi)-high note, right?   You didn't really expect a fully happy ending from this blog did you?   After all the times you've been here?   My mystery rose is a beautiful rose indeed and certainly provides some color to contrast the subtle daylilies, but is it really too much to expect that if I'm paying $13 or $14 for a big-box-store rose, it would be labeled correctly?   How hard is that?

Hello, I'm Orange....ish

'Kaveri'

While mowing this morning, ProfessorRoush was also assessing the garden.  I've been absent for nearly a week and the garden has gone the way of teenagers who have slipped from parental oversight; in short, chaos and a sense of testing limits is radiating from the garden. We've lacked rain for nearly 2 months, the paltry singular decent rain of a couple weeks back merely a fond memory now.   Summer heat seems to be moving in for an extended visit, like a troublesome relative who doesn't know when to leave.   Weeds are hellbent on world domination.  

Asclepias tuberosa

I can see the buffalograss thinking about dormancy amidst the drought, and the redbud leaves are curled at nightfall, stressed and sullen.  The first rose flush has fled to the past, accompanying the peonies and lilacs along into memories.  Oriental and Asiatic lilies are budded up, but yet to color.   The garden is green, but not the green of early spring, it's now the deep green of late summer, spotted here and there by a hint of yellowed or browned foliage that has been burnt by the hot sun.   One has to look hard to see color, but it's there, hidden in shade, the early daylilies and lilies and perennials vying for attention beneath the shade.

You have to look closely beneath this volunteer Redbud in back of my house, but deep in the darkness there are small fires burning.   The prolific 'Kaveri' lilies are in full bloom, orange and rust-red in ostentatious display.   Lower, a self-seeded Asclepias tuberosa (Butterfly MilkWeed) has escaped from the prairie into my border and I happily provide refuge for it in exchange for the spectacular play of sunlight and shade on its blooms and for the butterflies it attracts.    Another neighbor under the tree, the daylily 'Spacecoast Color Scheme' exerts its own orange-red theme on the venue.  Floral fires in my landscaping are, this week, the pride of my garden. 

'Space Coast Color Scheme'

Beyond these, I welcome the daylily season that's just getting started and the Knautia macedonia taking over my front landscaping, and the Shasta Daisies blooming and all the other minor garden players who contribute to the daily symphony.  There is, however, no rest for this gardener in the foreseeable future.  The second flush of roses is coming and I noted today the first Japanese Beetle on a 'Fru Dagmar Hastrup', a find that extended this weekend's garden chores with the necessity (in my view) of a good spraying of all the roses.  I am still in last year's mindset of all-out Beetle genocide, and so I sprayed and poisoned a good portion of the roses in the first preemptive strike of the season.   And then I rushed in and showered them pyrethrins away, leaving the garden to find its own way for another week.