'Tantra Boogie' is a rock star! This cultivar is tall, tough, consistent, prolific, and the blooms are girly, twirly, and gorgeous. Wisconsin-bred, this dormant tetraploid daylily thrives in crazy weather extremes. Hybridized by Linda Ball (2010), Tantra Boogie bloomed non-stop last summer in my garden from July 15 to August 14. Tantra is an unusual form-crispate that grows 40" tall and the blooms are between 5-1/2" to 6" in size. During peak season it puts on quite a show. So if you want a fuss-free northern plant Tantra Boogie fills the bill. Plant it anywhere, ignore it, and this is what you get.

Are there any other gardeners out there that dislike black walnut trees as much as I do? We have cut down quite a few black walnut trees on our own property, but are still surrounded by many more of them. Every fall the trees drop black walnuts in our yard and on the road in front of our house.  You can hear the loud  'pop, pop, pop, pop' of the shells being crushed as the cars drive over them. It sometimes sounds like a machine gun!

Black Walnut Positives:

• We filled and donated several buckets of black walnuts to our local Community Hunger Task Force Garden.
• Occasionally people who drive by stop and ask if they can gather walnuts; we are more than happy to oblige.
• The crows like to eat the nut meats.
• Our neighbor down the road is a wood-carver. After we cut one of our trees down we gave him the choice wood for carving. Now I have a beautiful black walnut bowl that he made for us as a thank you. I love black walnut trees in bowl form :)
• Another one of our neighbors used the rest of the wood for winter fuel.

Black Walnut Negatives:

• Don't step on them; you can easily twist your ankle.
• Juglone toxicity can affect certain perennials that are close by.
• Black walnuts stain sidewalks, driveways, chairs -- just about anything. Anyone who has touched or held a black walnut casing knows what I'm talking about. Ugh!
• On hot, humid days entire walnuts have been pressed into the asphalt of our driveway if a car rides over them.
• Walnuts + lawnmower = dulled blades
• You can be hit on the head by the falling walnuts (especially on a windy day). I have a small flower bed not too far from black walnut tree branches that hang over our yard. In the fall when I work in that particular garden I wear a bike helmet -- seriously!
  
• Right now the squirrels are burying black walnuts everywhere. Consequently, in spring I have to dig out dozens of baby walnut trees that are growing in my flower garden. The squirrels outnumber me for sure, and *they* have nothing else to do all day. Walnut trees roots are tough to dig out, even when the they are tiny! Call me annoyed.

Fall transplanting came to an abrupt halt with this weekend's 31 degree weather, harsh winds and snow/rain. I had planned to move a few more daylilies, but I guess at this point I'll call it good for the season. Realistically, this kind of October weather is not uncommon in Wisconsin.

Transplanting this fall was quite a bit easier because I used a new transplanting helper tool that Ange fashioned out of a 4"x4" piece of wood. This tool was especially effective when digging my larger plants to make them easier to handle. If you've ever dug out huge daylily clumps, you know how heavy and unruly they can be!

You can do this by yourself, but it is much easier with two people. When digging out a huge daylily clump with your shovel, you can raise the plant up and wedge this wooden tool underneath the root ball so it is easy to use a claw tool to remove the excess dirt. You can clean the root ball off completely by wedging the tool on all sides the plant. The plant will be considerably lighter, especially if the ground is heavy with moisture after a rainfall. Then the plant is easy to re-locate or move to the dividing table. I'll take any help I can get to make this (sometimes) strenuous job easier.

Pictured: The daylily being transplanted in these photos is 'Woman's Scorn.'

I usually hype annuals and perennials that I like, but today I want to talk about an annual that I think was an epic fail -- Red Double Wave Petunias. I expected that they would bloom profusely like the regular Wave Petunias that I love. Uh...no, far from it! After giving them three months to do something, the Red Double Wave Petunias were dug out and disposed of. Marigolds were planted in their place that are happy, blooming like crazy, and look 100% nicer.

I'm sharing this so you don't have to experience the extreme disappointment that I did. And just so you know, it wasn't only me. My good friend, an avid gardener, also bought these annuals and felt exactly the same way I did. She disposed of her Double Waves as well. Simply put, we would never purchase these again. In fact, we don't want them even if they were free!