Today's Flowers - June 28

Daylily

My day lilies are about to come to the end of their blooming season. I still have a lot of flowers showing, but the new buds are getting fewer and fewer. The blossom shown above is one of two different varieties my sister sent me several years ago. The lilies, whose names of course I do not know (shame, shame on me) came from Wayside Gardens. This one has a purple throat, the other is a bright coral. They have really been prolific bloomers this season, thanks to all the rain we had in May. I've leaned that water, water, water, is the key to getting blooms. I don't know what I'm going to do for flower posts when the lilies are all gone; they are about the only blooming plants in my yard!

Today's Flowers is a weekly Meme created by Luiz Santilli, Jr. and may be found here. Please visit to see others' lovely flower photos. If you have a flower photo of your own to share, please join us.

Today's Flowers - June 21

Addition to Lily Collection

(click on photo to enlarge)

While browsing around a new (to me) plant store this past Monday afternoon, I found a beautiful day lily, the like of which I did not have in my collection. Of course, it came home with me, and now resides in the best lily bed.

This lily has no name, only a designator: H14. A hybrid, this lily was created by the Flying V Greenhouse in Henderson, Texas and, I'm convinced it was shipped up here to Miller's Plants and Pecans (We Crack Pecans) in North Little Rock, Arkansas especially for me! LOL!

Since I acquired it, it has given me three big blooms, and has 12 more buds on the stems. I love it!

I haven't spoken with the hybridizer, yet, so I don't know how he feels about giving names to his creations, but this one is just too pretty to remain "H14." I'll let you know what I name it.

Today's Flowers is a weekly Meme created by Luiz Santilli, Jr. and may be found here. Please visit to see others' lovely flower photos. If you have a flower photo of your own to share, please join us.

Today's Flowers - June 14

"Lusty Leland" - 2009

My daylilys have been blooming almost faster than I can keep up with them. I learned that "dead-heading" them every day is a good practice, and I perform this routine both morning and evening. One morning this past week, I removed 87 spent blossoms; that same evening, I removed another 64, for a total of 151 blossoms that had flowered and died within 24 hours.

Even with that many gone, it made no appreciable difference in the appearance of the lily beds, and the blooming plants are still loaded with huge buds, ready to burst into full bloom over the next few days/weeks. Some varieties are just now sending up their flower spikes. I've forgotten what some of them look like and am as excited as a kid in a candy store!

I had a couple of pleasant surprises at the beginning of this past week. First, I discovered a new lily growing in the bed by my back door. I have no recollection of purchasing said lily (the name of which variety I have no idea), but I just love it. It's tiny, as you can see by the photo below in which I hold my 62mm camera lens cap close enough to touch the bloom.

New Kid on the Block

The second surprise is that lilies which I moved from my former home and planted along the back fence line in this garden in 1991, and which haven't bloomed for several years, have flower spikes! I attribute this to the cutting down of a group of trees that had shaded that part of the yard almost continuously. Unfortunately, that row of lilies is beset by and about to be overtaken by Dewberry vines and some other noxious creeping vine, the seeds for which were, no doubt, either blown in or deposited by birds. My gardening daughter and I are already making plans to isolate the lilies I want to save, dig them up and move them, and then apply a liberal application of Round-Up or another heavy-duty weed killer to get rid of all the creepy vines. It would be a pleasure to have a row of colorful lilies across the back fence, but the vines have to go first.

I reported in an earlier post that my daughter had gifted me with two Oriental Lilies. "Tom Pouce" (photo below) bloomed this past week, and it is elegant! Huge blooms, and very fragrant. To get a good idea of the bloom's size, consider that the bricks shown behind it are 7.5 inches wide and measure 3" between the mortar lines. As the plant is actually leaning against the wall, there is minimal skew on the relative size.

Tom Pouce - Three Blooms (6/12/2009)

The bloom has much more yellow in it than I expected from the plant information tag, but that may be due to the amount of sunlight the plant has received. I planted it somewhat in haste in a flower bed close to my front door, which is on the north side of the house, and while the bed gets some direct afternoon sun, this lily doesn't get as much sun as it needs to generate the pink in its petals. After the blooms are gone, I will move it to a sunnier permanent location. "Stargazer," the other lily she gave me (which also will have to be moved), has six buds on it, one almost ready to open. I'm hoping to have a photo of it to include here before post time. (I'm writing this on Friday.) NOTE: Sorry. . no photo. The flower is open, but I've been without electricity since 5 p.m. Friday, and cannot upload photos from the computer I am currently using. Don't know when I will have power again; the electric company has been "promising" restoration since midnight Friday.

I've learned (again) that one is never too old to learn something new. This past week, I discovered a marvelous (and new to me) day lily site on the Internet, Wright's Daylily Garden, in Hilham, TN, between Nashville and Knoxville. They have over 1,100 varieties of daylilies at their farm, and photos of most of them on their web site. I've been in daylily heaven just looking at the photos! The new thing that I learned from looking at their photos is that the lily I have always thought of as "Butterfly Kisses" is not! I do have "Butterfly Kisses" and it's blooming beautifully, thank you, but it's not the one I thought it was. That's what I get for not placing permanent markers by the fans. (Photo below)

The Real Butterfly Kisses

What the other gorgeous lily is, the one I have mis-named for years, I have no idea, but will search for photos of it. I'd love to know what it should be called.

One last photo -- of a mid-sized lily that is so purple it's almost black! It has bloomed profusely this year and I get great joy just looking at its color. Do I know its variety? No. There is another very small lily in the background; pale pinkish purple. It's also about the size of my lens cap.

Today's Flowers is a weekly Meme created by Luiz Santilli, Jr. and may be found here. Please visit to see others' lovely flower photos. If you have a flower photo of your own to share, please join us.

Today's Lilies

Just Arrived!

Where there were only buds yesterday, this morning there were open blooms. Every day now will bring more new flowers.

I can't remember exactly when I became enchanted with day lilies, but it's been at least 20 years and I still very much enjoy them. Perhaps it's because they are so hardy, needing very little care, and that they multiply like rabbits, bringing me more and more beautiful flowers each year. I've been saying for the past three summers, at least, that the lilies need to be divided, but I've delayed doing so, putting forth a number of excuses: it's too hot, it's too cold, it's too wet, my back hurts, I don't have a new bed to put them in, etc., etc.

Well, I have a new bed, at last, courtesy of my gardening daughter, so I need to get over my weak excuses and get the lilies thinned out as soon as it's time to do so. I'm sure they would like a bit more room to breathe.

Today's Lilies

New Blossoms, May 27

The center photo is of the same plant I pictured in yesterday's post. This afternoon, there were several blossoms open instead of just the one. As I posted in a comment to yesterday's post, each blossom lasts for only one day; blooms that open in the morning are drooping by eventide, and are completely withered and ready to fall come the next dawn. I suppose this is for the best; I don't know that my heart and soul could stand to be surrounded by such beauty if it endured for a long time.

I also commented yesterday that these lilies have no appreciable fragrance. Again, probably for the best. They make up for it in color and plentiful pollen.

My gardening daughter recently gifted me with two fragrant Oriental Lilies, Tom Pouce and Stargazer. I've not yet experienced the fragrance of Tom Pouce, but I know that one single Stargazer bloom will perfume my whole house. I am most anxious for those to bloom; I have only to be patient.

Day Lilies

GRAND OPENING!

First day lily bloom of the season.

(sorry, don't know the variety)

COMING SOON!

Although I've complained quite a lot a bit about the amount of rain we've had this month, it evidently has been very good for my day lilies. I've not counted them, but I estimate that currently there are over 100 buds on the lilies, and there are several varieties that have not yet budded. My camera and I will be busy for the next few weeks. YAY!

Today's Flowers

A Day Lily by my back door - Summer, 2008

Other than a few now snow-chilled daffodils (we had a scattering of snow last night), there are no flowers in my garden. So, I share with you the colorful lily which bloomed in a small bed just outside my back door in June of last year.

Today's Flowers is a weekly Meme created by Luiz Santilli, Jr. and may be found here. Please visit to see others' lovely flower photos. If you have a flower photo of your own to share, please join us.

Today's Flowers - Post 69

Day Lily - June, 2008

Today's Flowers is a weekly Meme which was created by Luiz Santilli, Jr. and may be found here. Please visit to see others' lovely flower photos. If you have a flower photo of your own to share, please join us.

Today's Flowers #2 - Post 59

Triple-Layer Day Lily

This stand of day lilies in my garden was started from a single fan given to me by my husband's sister-in-law in 1970. I brought a few of the plants to my present home when I moved here in 1990. There are about 60 separate plants in this one bed at present; I'm sure I will have even more when I divide them in a month or so (a long overdue job). Before the digging and dividing can begin, I have to prepare new flower beds to receive them, not a task I look forward to since the soil in my yard is mostly heavy clay. I have a lot of work ahead of me.

Today's Flowers is a new weekly Meme, posted each Monday, which was created by Luiz Santilli, Jr. and may be found here. Please visit to see others' lovely flower photos. If you have a flower photo of your own to share, please join us.