Kelvin’s daylily garden is about at its peak with around fifty different varieties in bloom. A couple early ones have already completed their season and some late ones are yet to start. The Joneses are inviting friends who would like to drop by to an open garden time on Friday, July 12 and and Sunday July 14 at 1:30 PM for a couple hours. Lemonade and cookie refreshments are planned.
Daylilies are still blooming even though things are a little soggy. The blossoms look great with a few drops of water on them, but eventually most of them are damaged by continued downpours. Every garden has some old favorites like my Ruby Spiders in the featured picture. But there are also up and coming new favorites like Primal Scream and Angel Rose. I know most of the daylily names but not all. The nametags are always moving in the process of clearing winter debris away. A few years ago I started growing daylilies from seed and encouraging “volunteers” too. Volunteers are ones that sow themselves in your garden. I am reaping some pleasant surprises from these practices this year resulting in the chance to name some new varieties like Kel’s Purple Ripple and Kel’s Star Glow.
Every gardener sh
ould have a tall sunflower jungle picture. So this year is my chance. I planted a few in what I thought was the least favorable corner of the garden. And they grew and grew. Now I’m cutting for the table for us and feeding the birds outside. The goldfinches are already eating to their heart’s content and yesterday I saw cardinals, another seedeater, flying nearby. The tallest is 4 feet higher than I can reach which means it’s about 12 feet tall. I planted several different types so I have lots of different colors too. Delightful!
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You could call it the mother lode of daylilies, but I just cannot resist the sheer beauty of a hillside filled with a variety of hemerocallis in bloom. That is what you see at Grace Gardens. (Hemerocallis is the formal scientific name for a daylily.) I try to visit at least once each summer and I have already been there twice this year. Each time I go I end up adding one or two more of these elegant flowers to my own collection. Tom and Kathy Rood invent new daylily varieties too. Kathy has one named after her now that has been featured in a magazine because it is very fragrant. I knelt down to smell its pleasant fragrance on this trip. I recommend visiting just to enjoy the beauty. But be prepared to get snared by the charm of hemerocallis too. Open house is this Saturday.
http://www.gracegardens.com/
This last weekend was a big celebration weekend for me and for my wife too. It was Father’s Day and I enjoyed appropriate attention and good food on account of that occasion. It was also the weekend we could tell our friends at Community Wesleyan the good news—those who had not read my blog or heard by the grapevine—that our daughter and son-in-law are expecting so we are going to be grandparents for the first time! That is cause for celebration! I hear that grandkids are the greatest!
Then to put the celebration over the top, Monday, June 20, was our 41st anniversary. We spent the bucks last year for the big four-O. So this year was lower key. We soaked up some sun amid the beauty of the Syracuse Rose Garden—delightful smells and eye-popping beauty. Then it was out to dinner at Red Lobster—I highly recommend the maple glazed salmon and shrimp. JoAnne says our wedding happened on a bright sunny but windy day a lot like this June 20! We consider each other a treasure and pray that God grants us many years of good health to enjoy together.
The annual children’s water party this past Sunday was special. But the day was also important as we celebrated two other things; the work of our dedicated teaching staff and the important moving up time for students moving from the children’s program to the 6-8 grade program. It was inspiring to listen as the teacher’s told their stories as to why they teach at church. And it was my privilege to pray for about seven student s who are marking this important transition in their journey. I was glad to be home from my trip away in time to be back in church even if I had not really returned to work officially yet. I snapped a few pictures of the all-church picnic that accompanied the water party.
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One of the great joys of summer for me is daylily season. Hemerocallis is one of my very favorite summer flowers. It is hardy, easy to grow, makes a good display and has few enemies. It transplants well, divides well, and is generally hard to kill, although the voles have been trying. When I arrived here, there was only one kind, the old-fashioned one, growing here. Now I have collected about three dozen varieties and every year I try to add a few more. Some I get from friends, some I buy in stores or from specialty catalogs and I have purchased several at Grace Gardens (http://gracegardens.com/), a daylily garden near Geneva that I love to visit. In recent years, I have tried to be better at recording the names, but with the way CNY winters beat up my name plates, I unfortunately have lost names regularly. Several of my lilies I inherited from my Grandmother Isaman, including one called Frans Hall that is still sold in catalogs today.
The name, daylily, comes from the fact that each bloom lasts only one day. (However, I have collected one strange but very fragrant variety that blooms each evening and closes in the morning). Many people are not aware that some strains are fragrant. In a way, it is sad each evening as beautiful displays come to an end with the setting sun. Yet in another sense, I always think about how every morning I have a brand new garden display! It is one small way God’s mercies are new every morning (Lam. 3: 22,23 ESV). The old blossoms of the night before were faded in the sun or beaten up by rain, but the new ones of the morning are perfect. So each morning all summer during day lily season, I go out to see what has opened for today. I have observed unusual things on those morning walks too. One morning, I found a green tree frog backed down into a large daylily blossom. If I extend the spiritual analogy, as a Christian, I can look forward each morning to how God’s grace will make this day a fresh experience walking with my Savior.
I’m including a few pictures from this year’s gardens. You may notice that I tend toward the jungle look in gardens as opposed to the neatly-separated-plants look. I like the happy coincidences that happen as plants overlap. I’d rather they fill in the spaces, and then I don’t have to. If it’s weeds – well, I will eventually get to them…
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