Daylilies were for many years the centerpieces of my garden, delightful to me because they're easy to grow & relatively disease-free, come in endless numbers of fascinating cultivars to collect, of which a goodly number were given me by fellow bead artists who were also gardeners.

The backbone of my collection came from Anne S, who had an acre garden,who specialized in these plants, and gave me some extras in 2002.

Over the years I've propagated all my daylilies by division, but even this method is not foolproof for getting genetically identical plants. This one seems to have gained ruffles and lost much of the shadowy peach colour over the years.^[1]

When we moved to our current location a little over 15 years ago, I immediately had to remove half the mature trees on the property, so there was adequate sun for my treasures; however, since I depend upon trees to keep the house cool in the summer, I planted (or allowed to grow) more trees, which, wouldn't you know it, have indeed been growing, and increasing the shade.

So my daylilies were increasingly overshadowed; the orange species is better able to cope with less sun, but my fancy ones slowly stopped blooming in their original locations. I kept moving them around, however^[2] trying to find ever more limited sunny spots for them.

Meanwhile, the silver maples have continued to age: one has lost most of its canopy, and will have to come down this fall, but even now that loss has meant that the plants I've moved to street side of the front yard are blooming, such as this pinkish yellow ruffled specimen, shot over the course of its perhaps week long bloom. Perhaps after the tree comes down, I'll get more buds and a longer season in the future.

I like this last one because it has a lot of green in the flower center:

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.

Sylvus Tarn