2020 was uncharted territory for me in more ways than I could have ever imagined.
I've learned:
Pictured: A quaint storefront I passed by in Bath, England. Every entity has its own set of terms and acronyms, and daylilies are no different. Daylily details can be very helpful when purchasing plants because it helps you narrow down exactly what characteristics you want, to avoid disappointment later. (Perhaps you want only a late-season blooming daylily, for example.) Many of these terms are listed on a daylily's name tag, or if you purchase online some or all of the registration information is typically included.
This list is in no way comprehensive, but it does cover the most commonly used terms and acronyms that I've come across. So here's the 411... Hybridizer: The person who bred the hybrid daylily by hand pollination, and in most cases introduced or registered it with the American Daylily Society Ploidy: The number of sets of chromosomes of the daylily
Tetraploids are typically more sturdy with heavier petal substance, while diploids are more delicate and graceful in appearance. When hybridizing, a diploid cannot be crossed with a tetraploid and vice-versa. Foliage: This refers to whether the foliage stays green instead of dying back through the fall and winter
Fan - A complete division of the plant which consists of leaves, crown and roots SF/DF = Single Fan/Double Fan Scape - The flower stalk above the crown Scape Height - The mature average scape height Bloom Season: Approximate time of flowering (determined by the hybridizer at their location; this may vary slightly if you live in a different location)
Bloom Terms:
Daylilies pictured: 'Webster's Pink Wonder' and 'Lounge Lizard' Guilty! Luckily, each daylily I bought just for the name turned out to be an amazing plant! Here are six of my 'I love the name' daylilies (pictured in alphabetical order):
Here are a few daylily hacks that have helped me grow healthy daylilies over the years:
As much as I love my daylilies, Picky-Patty-Me harbors a few pet peeves. Here are my top ten:
Here are some of my experiences that make up the ever-present irony of daily life. Do any sound familiar?
I'm often glad I live out in the country, because I'd be the first to admit that I can get very distracted while outside gardening. I sometimes find myself just sitting still with my eyes closed so I can hear the birds, feel the wind in my hair, or enjoy the warm sun on my face. If I had close neighbors they'd probably wonder what I was doing.
Weeding, after all, is not the most rewarding garden activity. I can easily be distracted from weeding -- fill that bunny hole, stomp down that mole tunnel, remove the Japanese beetles from my plants, or run to get my camera or phone to capture that perfect photo I can visualize. Some days (or should I say most days) weeding can take way longer than expected. But I don't think that's a bad thing; it's all part of what we enjoy about the garden experience. And on a positive note...it's great for your well-being. Pictured: Daylily 'Grey Witch' If you talk, sing, or play music to your plants, will they respond? Does it help them grow?
I read an interesting article "The Intelligent Plant" written by Michael Pollan and published in The New Yorker. According to the article, plants have the ability to sense and react to the world. For instance, when plants were played a recording of a caterpillar chewing on a leaf, they reacted by secreting a defensive chemical, just as though they were threatened. Pollan also states that plants can sense gravity, the presence of water, and can adjust/shift the direction of growing roots when it senses there is an obstruction (a rock, perhaps). The Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters explored the possibility that plants respond to sound and/or speech. They set up seven greenhouses, four of which were equipped with stereos playing looped recordings. Two were of negative speech, while two were of positive speech. The fifth greenhouse had classical music playing, while the sixth had heavy death metal. A seventh greenhouse, set up as the control, had no music. The team found that the plants in the four greenhouses with recordings grew faster than the control plants with no music, but the plants in the greenhouses with music grew even faster than the negative and positive speech. Surprisingly, the plants in the greenhouse exposed to heavy death metal music grew the best of all! Bottom line: Talk and sing to your plants; complain, yell, and scream...just don't give them the silent treatment. New Yorker article "The Intelligent Plant" http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/23/the-intelligent-plant Discovery Mythbusters (Episode #23 aired November 15, 2004) Pictured: Daylily 'Black Falcon Ritual' Recently I passed by a home that had a ginormous resin cow in the front yard. The homeowner had tied a chain around the cow and wrapped the chain around a tree trunk with a padlock. Cows are big here in Wisconsin! This is yard art at its best!
You've all seen yard whimsy gone wild, yes? It's that yard that has one too many flamingos and somehow crosses the invisible line between tasteful and tacky. It stops you in your tracks to gape at in disbelief. Thoughts I ponder when I see yard whimsy gone wild:
Garden slip-ups are, without a doubt, one of the easiest topics for me to write about since I have single-handedly made just about every blunder that a gardener possibly could. As I've mentioned in earlier blogs, I did not grow up in a gardening family; my love of perennials came unexpectedly out of left field. Without a mentor I learned to garden by the trial-and-error method. Some of my gardening ideas worked (luck), but many others were an epic fail. It was then that I borrowed books from the library. The gardening books helped me achieve a much better outcome. And why is it that we never read instructions until we screw up or can't figure something out? Human nature, I guess.
Here are a few of the things I've learned (the hard way):
Grateful living is happy living. Every year at this time I like to take time to reflect on things that made me smile or feel grateful over the past year. Here's my list:
Pictured above: Minneapolis sophisti-cat 'Sophie,' a shelter rescue who now lives the life of a princess |
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