Is there a 12-step program for day lily people?
Hi, I'm Mary (Hi, Mary!), and I'm in love with day lilies. I don't know how it happened -- I never intended it, but apparently I have a weakness I never recognized, cause here I am.
Most of my life I avoided day-lilies like the plague. All I knew of them were that my mom hated the orange-spotted "tiger lily" that grew on the edge of our backyard between us and the neighbor. I had no idea that day-lilies were different from those tiger lilies, until a couple years ago when I was needing something new for my yard, and I asked about them on my greyhound message board (my greyhound message board is my go-to place for any kind of information ... a vast wealth of knowledge over there).
The biggest answer I got was that day-lilies are easy to grow and impossible to kill, so I headed off to my local Lowes where they were on sale, and stocked up.
I was happy, I thought. What I had bought was enough.
Until I was leaving Lowes one evening, loading up my car with that day's purchases, and a lady pulled into the parking space next to me. As I was getting out of her way, she asked me if I wanted some day-lilies. Next thing you know, I'm driving over to her house in the early June evening (the year that GA was having 100F temps in June), helping her divide her plants and stuffing them into the back of my car.
That's it, I said. I'm settled. I have enough.
Until last summer when I found some day-lilies on clearance at Lowes, so I brought them home to save them, and found some spots to squeeze them into.
No more, I said. Let these grow, because they'll spread and need to be divided, and it will be enough.
ENOUGH.
Then I joined ATP, and then Sue started posting day-lily photos. EVERY DAY, she posts new photos of absolutely gorgeous plants, AND provides the name of the nursery that sells them. How can I fight that? I can't shut my eyes to such beauty, and I've not figured out how to keep my fingers from pushing my browser over to the nursery her photos point to.
NOW, I'm looking at my yard again, seeing spots where I could have a plethora of day-lilies planted, with continual blooms. This means PLANNING - something I avoid like that proverbial plague. It means researching varieties and colors and bloom times and saving money so I can mail-order plants instead of depending on what they have at the big box stores.
So I'll be watching my oval-edge this spring, to see where I planted my spring-blooming bulbs, and marking the spots where the day-lilies will go in and around them, encircling the oval that I carved out of the center of my yard, mixing and matching colors and bloom times as best I can (given my preference for winging it vs. planning).
And it's all Sue's fault. Thanks, Sue!
