Once upon a time a woman moved into a house right after Easter. It had an empty back yard that was mostly grass with a few trees and a bed along one fence. The only plants in the bed were some crepe myrtles, a red leafed bush with thorns and a large clump of a long leafed plant that was not very pretty. She didn’t care, she was busy getting the inside of the house in order, enrolling her almost 5 year old in preschool for the summer and keeping track of a very energetic 10 month old toddler. The backyard was ignored.
The next year, as May and June rolled around, she did not really notice the green sticks growing out of the grassy plants in the back yard. And then July came….Orange double flowers were blooming on the sticks! They were kind of pretty, but they didn’t last very long, here and gone in a day. But there sure were lots of buds. The actual show lasted for several weeks. It happened again the next year and then the next.
She liked the flowers and found out that they were called daylilies. The local Home Depot had some in pots with colorful flowers on the labels with names like Frankly Scarlett and Siloam Double Classic, so she bought a few and planted them. She had to wait until the next year to see anything though, no blooms from the new plants. It was worth the wait however, as she did get beautiful scarlet and pastel pink blooms on her new plants the next spring.
While waiting for her new acquisitions to bloom she also noticed some orange daylilies growing along the side of the road. “Hmmmm, free plants? Yes!” She dug a few up and gleefully planted them behind the others. She also planted a few in the front yard by the mailbox to keep the small yellow daylilies that grew there company.
Then she discovered on-line daylilies. A few months later she was the proud owner of a box of bare-root plants. She followed the instructions included in the box and planted her new acquisitions in the fall. Unfortunately she did not label them. This oversight was remedied the next year. In the spring she added a few more from the same source. The daylily bug had well and truly bitten. NOW she was sorry that nothing was labeled. Thank God for being a packrat. All the labels were collected in a packet in the garage and the two packing slips from the on-line orders. An intensive on-line search looking for photos of all her plants (need to be able to identify them after all) led her to Dave’s Garden Plant files. Joining seemed like a good idea. New friends were made and much was learned.
Then the bane and joy of her daylily existence was discovered: the Lily Auction! An exhausting round of seed buying was followed by the discovery that plants could be bought in the fall and winter for spring delivery. She was well and truly lost. Spring of 2009 rolled around and she was the proud (terrified) owner of 400+ new bare root daylilies. Two new beds were made and the rest is history.
Before and After
A month after
Last Year
That was three years ago. Boy has life changed. It is almost Easter again. Hi folks, this is Laura Eiras, known to many as Ditchlily206, I dropped the 206 part when I joined here to just be Ditchlily. I live in Huntsville AL and am a member of the North Alabama Daylily Society (NADS), our local club that meets here in Huntsville at the Botanical Gardens. Thanks Fred for reminding me to come back. My kids are now 9 and 13. My 13 year old daughter is somewhat interested in daylilies, enough to go to the Region 14 meeting that was here in Huntsville last year. Lots of fun. I have over 900 different daylilies at this point. In the spring of 2010 I added to one of the beds I made the year before. Last year I added one more bed. This year I am taking a break. It feels nice to just have to worry about getting the existing ones ready for spring and not have gobs of new plants that need to be planted.
I am still a member of Dave’s Garden, but plan to be more active here as well. I see many names I have missed, as well as many new ones that I hope will become cherished friends.