'Jen Melon' is one of my favorite old-school daylilies that is hardy and fuss-free. I got this melon-yellow daylily as a freebie when I bought another plant, and to be honest I actually liked Jen Melon better than the plant I purchased! This dormant diploid was hybridized in 1987 by Oakes Daylilies in Tennessee. Although registered at 26," my plant grows 32" tall.  The thick, waxy blooms are consistently 7" in size and hold up wonderfully in any kind of weather. A midseason-late bloomer, Jen Melon bloomed from July 19 through August 21 in my garden.

This pretty is also an American Daylily Society 2018 Honorable Mention award winner. This award is the first official 'stamp of approval' where good performance goes beyond the regional level.

In Ireland, the people were so friendly and welcoming wherever we went. In addition to traveling through the lush, emerald-green countryside, we visited Waterford, Ireland's oldest city, where the Vikings played a prominent role (see the photo of a restored Viking ship), Jerpoint Park where we saw 12th Century remains from the Lost Town of Newtown Jerpoint, Kilkenny Castle (built in 1195), and the capital and largest city, Dublin.

Everyone told us that the Guinness Storehouse was the place to go in Dublin. That's me relaxing in the Gravity Bar with a 360 degree view of Dublin in the background. The displays on the various floors of the Storehouse were cutting-edge and thoroughly engaged all of your senses. The clock photo below is just one example.
https://www.guinness-storehouse.com

The Glasnevin Cemetery tour in Dublin was surprisingly one of my favorites. The cemetery is 124 acres in size with 1.5 million interments. Our guide was a knowledgeable, animated high school history teacher whose love of Irish history was infectious. It was mind-boggling to see literally thousands and thousands of beautiful, intricately crafted monuments from centuries past. There were cherubs, angels, statues, and Celtic designs for as far as you could see. Just wow...

And what would a trip to Ireland be like without hearing traditional Irish music and watching Irish dancing? We spent an entertaining evening at the Merry Ploughboy Pub in Dublin -- a great time with wonderful music, dancing, and delicious food and drink.
https://www.mpbpub.com/

Every season I seem to have one daylily that goes above and beyond in performance with re-bloom and length of bloom. In 2019 it was "Time Stopper." This beauty grew to a height taller than I had ever seen before (58") and it bloomed the longest of any daylily in my garden. Bloom started on June 15 and continued through September 15. Perhaps it was all that rain we had! Time Stopper is a hardy, reliable plant that grows vigorously in a northern climate without any special fuss or care.

To read more about this cultivar's attributes, I previously posted a profile of Time Stopper in 2017:
http://www.iplanthappiness.com/blog/time-stopper

Most of my 2019 gardening season was spent downsizing. Although these daylilies were hard for me to give up, they now have new homes with friends and family, and I can still visit them. And just so you know, I still have way more daylilies than any one person needs.

The first photo is 'Lies and Lipstick.' The other photos are in alphabetical order: 'Bluegrass Music,' 'Bordeaux Beauty,' 'Dipped in Ink,' 'Dragon's Eye,' 'Double Charm,' 'Elizabeth Salter,' 'Gentle Shepherd,' 'Grecian Gown,' 'Greedy Governor,' 'Heavenly Beginnings,' 'Heaven's Pride,' 'Larry Grace,' 'Lies and Lipstick,' 'May May,' 'Mexican Magic,' 'Miss Jessie,' 'Patty in Pinstripes,' 'Siloam Double Classic,' 'Star of Fantasy,' 'Startle,' 'Wayne Felgar,' and 'Will Return.'

Cardiff is a seaside city in southeast Wales in the UK. Not only is Cardiff the largest city, but it is also the capital of Wales. Several building construction projects were going on in Cardiff during my visit, so the cityscape is in flux.

I had never eaten breakfast in a castle -- well, cross that off my list! I enjoyed a traditional Welsh breakfast in Cardiff Castle while listening to melodic harp and guitar music in addition to Welsh folk songs. I also toured the medieval Gothic Cardiff Castle complex that was built in the 11th century. My second photo shows the 'arrow-loops' or 'arrow-slits' in the castle. They are narrow openings or crosses set inside walls and towers enabling defenders to launch arrows at potential invaders or attackers. It's hard to wrap your head around that concept in 2019...

Cardiff Castle is rented out for parties, weddings and even as a filming location, in addition to the tour revenue. This helps defray the cost of castle upkeep. So I guess you'd call it a "working" castle.

The last photo is of the Cardiff waterfront. While at Cardiff Bay I also saw the Senedd - the National Assembly for Wales, the Wales Millennium Centre, and the Pierhead Building. A carnival was in full-swing at the waterfront, so there was music and activity well into the evening.

'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!

Two garden helpers came to the rescue last Sunday afternoon, for which I was very grateful. My 'grands' made fall garden cleanup a breeze for me! The daylily scapes were flying as the two of them pulled off the dried-up scapes, put them in a wheelbarrow, and disposed of them in the field. This saved me an enormous amount of time. An A+ effort! After the work was done, Grandpa took them on a tractor ride to the farm next door to visit the goats.

Last week the daylilies got their haircuts (trimmed foliage) and medical checkups (weeded) in preparation for winter. It's a big job, but I like to have my gardens thoroughly in order before winter. Believe me, it saves a lot of work come spring. A few plants were dug out to remove dandelions that somehow ended up in the middle of the clumps. The recent rain we've had made that job quite a bit easier than I expected.

We have started moving daylilies around, as well. You know the drill, the trial-and-error garden game of getting the right plant in the right place (yet again). I plan to have that job completed within the next couple of weeks. I like to have all my transplanting done by mid-October to allow the daylilies to settle for about a month before we get a hard frost. (I'm not too happy about that thought...)

'Dean Corey' has really been impressive this year. Dean was a bonus gift daylily on an order I placed two years ago. Hybridized by Goldner-Pruden in 2008, Dean Corey is listed as a midseason bloomer, but in my yard it is more midseason-late with bloom from July 23 through September 10.  And this is a tall plant! It grows every bit of the 40" tall it is registered at and the flowers are  7" in size.

My plant grows in 100% sun. In the early morning Dean is quite vibrant and by late afternoon the color mellows to a beautiful pastel (like photo #3). I love both looks and the bloom substance remains impeccable all day.  What an amazing daylily this is. If it is growing this well after only two years in my garden, I can only imagine what the future will bring! I love seeing these cheerful blooms all the way into September.

As I crossed the border from Ireland into Northern Ireland my first thought was how much the beautiful rural scenery reminded me of western Wisconsin, but once in the populated areas the country had a flavor all its own.

Titanic Belfast (pictured above) opened in 2012 as a tribute to Belfast's maritime heritage on the site of the former Harland & Wolff shipyard in the city's Titanic Quarter where the RMS Titanic was built. (The RMS stands for Royal Mail Steamer/Royal Merchant Ship.) Also noteworthy is that filming of Game of Thrones seasons 1-7 took place in Northern Ireland including the Titanic Studios in Belfast.

What I found most interesting were the painted murals on Belfast's 'Peace Walls.' The Peace Walls are located in what was once an area of violent conflict decades ago (The Troubles). The murals are definitely a walk through the history of this city. Recently painted murals are more graffiti-based and convey a message of peace. I posted just a few for you to see, in addition to some city photos.

Visiting London had always been one of my dreams. What  I loved the most about London was the diversity. It was not unusual to hear five or six different languages in a matter of minutes while out walking. I enjoyed a conversation with our Iranian Uber driver and hearing his story. And it was fun taking a photo of a family on the London Eye and having them take our photo despite the fact that we didn't totally understand each other's language.

Along with the diversity came a great variety of ethnic restaurants to experience. I ate, for the first time, at a Lebanese restaurant (loved it). Traditional breakfast buffets in the UK always included trays of sausages, mushrooms, baked tomatoes, and baked beans--regular and barbecue! This, in addition to, porridge, eggs, crumpets, scones, fresh breads, croissants, muffins, a variety of granola, clotted cream, jams/marmalade, and several cheeses. Believe me when I say eating breakfast each day was awesome. Coffee was WAY stronger in the UK than in the US. There was a little water-adding going on at first, but after a week or so, not so much :)

What was hard to get used to in London was the insane amount of traffic! You better pay attention, because Londoners don't dally around. It was disconcerting to have four lanes of fast, congested traffic (driving on the opposite side of the road than in the US) and seeing bicycles and motorcycles whiz by *in between* the four lanes of traffic. Not to mention cars jumping the curbs to cut in front of each other. "Mama Mia!" to quote our Italian driver as he yelled and gestured out the car window on the way from Heathrow Airport. With 8+ million people, intense traffic is expected, but if I had to drive in London on a daily basis I'm pretty sure I would need anxiety meds.

While in London a few of the landmarks we saw included London Bridge, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, St. Paul's Cathedral, Kensington Gardens, Trafalgar Square, Picadilly Circus, Westminster Abbey, and Hyde Park. We also took a Thames River cruise to see Tower Bridge and toured the Tower of London, in addition to visiting a few pubs. London is a contrasting mix of contemporary modern architecture alongside of historic buildings from centuries past.

Photos: The London landscape of the Thames River taken from the top of the London Eye, a pub that served fish and chips, the doorway of a pasta/pizza restaurant, me on the London Eye, the Tower of London, a British Royal Guard, and Tower Bridge.

Where did the summer go? Mornings are getting cooler and mist-covered. Crickets are everywhere, and they are huge this year! There are only about 12 daylilies still blooming in my yard, but I am thankful for my late bloomers. They continue to add color to my flower beds when most of my other daylilies have dried up scapes and much of the foliage is starting to look ratty. I always trim my daylily foliage this time of year to keep my yard looking neater. After the trim I can check around each plant and make sure no moles or bunnies burrowed under or around them and pull out any invasive weeds that I couldn't see otherwise. Every single plant gets a check-up.

The recent fall-like weather has been great for transplanting. I appreciate every single day that I have been able to be outside.

Four of my late season daylilies pictured include:  'Deliverer' (coral), 'Heavenly Starbrite '(yellow-green), 'Hymn to Her' (pink), and 'Suzy Cream Cheese' (pale peach)

It's that time of year...time to shuffle daylilies around my yard, while deciding what will stay and what will go. To complicate matters, last weekend I purchased more daylilies at the Wisconsin Daylily Society Sale in Madison. Their annual sale is one of the premier daylily events, not only in the state of Wisconsin, but in the entire nation. This year my friend Sally joined Ange and I so she could experience the adrenaline rush of  being in the huge tent, surrounded by 700+ different daylily cultivars. You have to fill what is on your list and make some quick decisions, because there are dozens of other daylily addicts on the exact same frenzied mission that you are. Plants disappear fast! And yes, time definitely stands still while you are rushing around the tent grappling for daylilies.

This year the sale was held at Olbrich Park, right next to scenic Lake  Monona and the weather was absolutely perfect. I bought some plants that were on my long-standing wish list and got some for friends and family, as well. Sally purchased some super daylilies for herself, her mom, and her sister who are also daylily aficionados. We enjoyed a delicious lunch at "Monty's Blue Plate Diner," one of our favorite places to eat when in Madison--it's a renovated gas station. And we managed to squeeze in a visit to "Penzey's" which is nearby East Towne Mall.  This was Christmas in August!

All told, the three of us had a most awesome day. More please :)

Wisconsin Daylily Society
Monty's Blue Plate Diner
Penzey's Spices

Over the past two weeks I visited England, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland and loved every minute of it! The weather was amazing -- 60's to very low 70's. Upon my return, it was quite a shock to step off the plane into the humid high 80's in Minneapolis. It took a day or two to re-acclimate. When I organize my photos I will share some of my experiences. In the meantime, here are photos of what I missed in my own garden while I was traveling. Sorry/not sorry :)

I'm gifting myself with a couple of weeks away from technology. My blog will be on hiatus until August 18th.  We'll catch up then!

Pictured: Twin fawns that visit my yard daily - Mom is hidden in the thicket, watching.

'House of Misrepresentatives' really came into its own this year. This daylily has grown in my garden for the past few years, but this year it really demanded my attention. What blows me away is the beautiful color of the large 8.5" blooms. Unfortunately my photos are unable to convey the vibrant violet plum color that I see. The blooms are perfection -- no wilting or fading on these waxy flowers (bud count 21-25). House of Misrepresentatives is a dormant tetraploid that grows  43" tall in my garden, a bit more than the registered 29". I guess that happens when plants are happy. House is a midseason bloomer that started on July 17 and as you can see by the photos has many more blooms ready-to-go.

House of Misrepresentatives is a Wisconsin-bred daylily hybridized by Nate Bremer (2011). I grow a few other Bremer daylilies and all of them are hearty growers that thrive in our crazy climate. And it's always a plus when the daylily's name makes me smile.

My early daylilies have finally started to bloom this week. This year has to be a record for the latest bloom-start ever. That being said, when I was dead-heading flowers yesterday morning I stopped by 'Spacecoast Cherries and Cream' and marveled at what a beautiful garden plant this is. It's reliable, consistent and never fails to put on a show every single day during bloom season. This daylily has acclimated to Wisconsin very well, and for a Florida-bred daylily, that's noteworthy!

Spacecoast Cherries and Cream is a 2000 Kinnebrew daylily. It is a semi-evergreen tetraploid that has 5.5" blooms (bud count: 21-25) and grows about 27" tall in my garden. Last year's bloom time was from July 2-August 3. This daylily also holds up wonderfully in the hot sun. The first photo was taken at about 7:00 am, while the second one was taken a few hours later.