Cutting Edge Genetics

I admit that I felt inspired yesterday after receiving comments on my post about losing southern daylilies. It feels a relief to share thoughts and frustrations on what to others, outside of our daylily bubble, is not a particularly interesting topic. I count many local gardeners as my friends, but few specialize in daylilies and none hybridize. What a relief to find a group who is interested in pontificating about both!

Yesterday Paul Lewis used the phrase cutting edge genetics in his comment. Today I would like to deconstruct that expression and try to get at what is meant by that. 

The term cutting edge, to me, indicates something that is both new and superior to what was. This begs the question, can genetics be cutting edge? Genetics is a field of study. Can we say cutting edge physics? biology? literature? 

Actually, yes, we can... and when we do we are usually referring to what is new and perhaps more complicated and esoteric, but not necessarily what is superior, although that is sometimes implied. Quantum physics is a new field, but it's not superior to mechanical physics.  Contemporary literature, even that lauded as brilliant and amazing, isn't necessarily superior to all its predecessors. 

So perhaps cutting edge genetics is really just a term that means new and novel genetics--or, more specifically, genetic code that is sequenced in a new way that produces a specific behavioral and/or phenotypical trait not previously seen in a daylily. But I think it's important that we recognize that what is novel is not always superior, and is sometimes, in fact, inferior to what has been previously introduced.

Take Nicole DeVito's, Indefinable. We all know it. That daylily started a craze in creating variegated daylilies. Pink Stripes preceded Indefinable, but Pink Stripes is a dip, and is simply striped, as opposed to Indefinable's broken splotches of yellow and magenta. (This is not to diss Pink Stripes, which is a superior plant in so many ways. It's hardy. It multiplies readily. It's fertile.)

But we all love Indefinable. We all paid a gazillion dollars to obtain it. We all coddle it to keep it alive. We all dream of introducing a daylily as beautiful as that one. 

The thing is, though, as most of you know, Indefinable is a flawed plant in many ways. It is not hardy (which is a big flaw in my mind ;), it is not robust and vigorous even when given the most loving care and brought inside for the winter, it is not quick to bloom and it is very persnickety about setting seed. So while I would agree that Indefinable is cutting edge genetically, it is only cutting edge in that its color mutation is not one that has been seen before. The plant itself is an inferior plant in most other ways. 

A goal has been to take the broken color feature of Indefinable and breed it into a more robust, hardy plant. This has been done, now, by a few hybridizers. Rich Howard comes to mind. :) I don't own one of Rich's Indefinable babies yet, so I can't speak to what they are like outside of the beautiful flower, but I still question whether those genetics are superior, or whether those genetics are simply new phenotypically while exhibiting more classically superior traits like good habit and hardiness. 

All of this to say:

Most of us equate a new look with superior genetics. 

They aren't the same thing.

I think what many of us aim to do is create daylilies with a new look, that ALSO exhibit the superior (and classic, as in, not new) genetic traits of hardiness, vigor, great branching and bud count, resistance to disease/rust, and an attractive habit. Very few hybridize with the hope of creating superiority in terms of the latter characteristics with little or no attention paid to phenotype. Brian Reeder of Sundragon Daylilies comes to mind. 

Like many, I am a sucker for a new look. But I think we need to be careful about labeling those southern beauties that we have to treat with kid gloves to insure their survival as "cutting edge" genetically or otherwise. As hybridizers, we still will want to obtain those plants so we can get to work translating that new look into something we know will actually thrive (not just survive) in any horticultural zone. But when appealing to daylily enthusiasts who aim to collect and show off their plants as opposed to use them solely in hybridizing, I think we have to be careful about using such terms as cutting edge in common parlance. 

We also need to be honest about the plant we are introducing. If it's not hardy, that's fine! But tell the world it's not hardy. It's quite telling that we sell a plant by only showing a picture of its flower on the very best day it's ever had, and sometimes using filters that belie its actually colors. It is possible to be honest, and I think it's also our responsibility as hybridizers. Some have started to do this. I noted Subhana Ansari (Flourishing Daylilies) indicates exactly where her lilies have survived and where they have not on her website. 

Thoughts?

This is Grossman's Prince of Camelot. It has beautiful flowers and is a robust plant. 

 

Losing Southern Grown Daylilies Over the Winter

I've been writing blog posts in my head, as I work, for months. 

Through Facebook I have become friendly with so many daylily enthusiasts, many who hybridize as I do. I know you're out there!  I hope that this blog serves as a launching point for discussions of all things daylily--and gardening and birding and hybridizing / breeding of any and all plants and animals. 

This morning I'd like to write about how I AM SICK OF LOSING SOUTHERN GROWN DAYLILIES OVER THE WINTER.

And yet. 

I still purchase southern-grown daylilies. Again and again. And I use them in my hybridizing. And then my seedling don't make it through the winter. And hence we must ask, What is wrong with me?

Partly the problem is that *sometimes* a southern grown daylily will do well here. I remember learning in Psychology 101--a class I took some thirty odd years ago--but still, that in terms of Pavlovian training, intermittent rewards make a rat more addicted to a behavior than constant rewards. So, the fact that sometimes a daylily from the south does great here in Massachusetts has trained me to keep buying them. That must be it. :)

It's easy to identify a dormant based on its spring time condition. It has shed its leaves completely over the winter, and those leaves are dead, dry and crumpled at the base of the plant come spring, easily swept away. Evergreens, on the other hand, are a tangled mass of moist, decaying leaves from which new growth attempts to grow. You can't just swipe away last summer's growth because it's actually still very much a part of the plant. It's no wonder evergreens generally don't do as well here, then, as they just don't give up, attempting to stay alive above ground all winter long. Dormants rest. Evergreens keep working--even though the energy they need from the sun to keep chugging along isn't available to them as it is in the south. 

But those southern beauties are just so ... beautiful! I can't resist bringing them north to their peril.

I've introduced sixteen daylilies over the last three years. Naturally I love all of them, but I must admit that it's been so much easier for me to keep the dormants I've introduced in stock, as opposed to the evergreens. My dormants bounce back after division and happily and sturdily create new fans for me to sell each spring, but my evergreens reproduce so much more slowly and suffer every time I divide them.  Hence, my dormants are out in the world at this point, in others' gardens, but my evergreens are rarely for sale at all, and when they are sold I worry they will not do well in any garden north of my own. 

The moral of the story is....

I've been hybridizing for six years now, and I'm just now beginning to understand my own criteria for a plant I want to introduce. It can't just survive the winter. It has to like the winter, and it has to multiply in a way that allows me to continually sell it or gift it to others. This eliminates 90% of my seedlings from contention. And this breaks my little heart. It really does.

It especially breaks my heart because it means I need to stop using tender, southern beauties in my hybridizing, or at the very the least only one parent can be of that type. 

Here are a few seedlings that bloomed last summer for me that either didn't make it through the winter or barely made it. 

 Luanne Tarro x Holy Lamb

 unknown x Little Red Genie

Cherry Ripples x Chaos Choeography

 Crystal Rubies x The Ultimate Sacrifice

Are you sad for me? I am sad for me. I'm also a bit sad for these beautiful plants, who had they been created in say, Florida, they might be on the road to introduction! But instead they graced me with their ephemeral beauty, and then succumbed to the evils of wintry night. Tragedy.

Thanks for reading my drivel. 

For those interested in all things daylily and hybridizing, I'm going to attempt to write most days going forth. :) 

If you are a daylily person and feel moved to comment, please do! This blog is going to be my way of reaching out to you to share our common obsession.

Awaiting Bloom

In late May there is a lull in my garden. The weigela, iris and golden alexanders are in bloom, but mostly the garden is just green. The peony, foxglove and rose will soon explode, and the petunias and impatiens I grew from seed in my basement, though still very small, are producing small pockets of color. But mostly I am waiting and staring out across a sea of green. 

What I want is this: I want my daylilies to bloom. 

I still have a month until they begin. 

I've been contemplating. One way to bring excitement to my gardening days earlier in the summer is to get a greenhouse. Northern hybridizers with greenhouses are able to have a first crossing "season" in May and early June and a second in July when the daylilies bloom outdoors.

But I'm fairly certain a greenhouse is not in my future, at least while I'm living n Massachusetts. Eventually Andy and I will retire to Maine, and I know I will have a greenhouse then, but for the next five years I am both stuck in Massachusetts and also stuck without a greenhouse. 

So what to do? 

I think the answer is to expand my hybridizing. 

Here's what this. means: Bearded iris, baby.

Hybridizing bearded iris does not appear to be as simple as hybridizing daylilies. For one thing, iris closet their sexuality more so than the exhibitionist daylily and lilium. With iris, it took me a bit of time to even locate the stamens, and I had to actually watch a video in order to figure out the whole "stigmatic lip" thing. Further, it seems that iris pollen is more stealth than that of lilies. The stamens are fairly easy to locate now that I know where to look, but I have yet to find an iris with a lot of pollen on any of its anthers. 

Figuring out out how to pollinate an iris led me down a slippery hybridizing slope. It's raining today, so instead of weeding and puttering about the garden I spent the morning researching how to pollinate lupine (not that hard), zinnia and echinacea (seems nearly impossible) and lilium. Of those three I am most interested in echinacea, but I think they might be too complicated for me to go down that road. For one thing, every one of those little disc florets on a "single" echinacea flowerhead has its own stigma and anther, and so each can make a seed. This is great for reproduction, but not so great if you're trying to control making a hybrid without self-contamination of pollen. Honestly, I don't even get how one would do it! 

Hybridizing lilium seems a lot like hybridizing daylily, except that apparently there is a lot of cross-pollen contamination that occurs because of bees and the fact that ornamental lilies have about a ton of pollen on each anther. In order to deal with this hybridizers place tinfoil over the fertilized stigma and then remove all the flower's stamens. I couldn't find any information on how long it takes a baby lily to grow a huge, flowering bulb. That is something I wonder. Does it take  2 years? 4 years? more?

Anyway, I plan to try my hand at hybridizing iris next season. It's a bit too late this season: I have only a few iris to use and they are all boring. What this means is that I can buy some cool iris this summer. :) I'll also try to hybridize a few ornamental lilies this summer. I've always loved the oriental and orienpet lilies, so I have quite a collection already to use in hybridizing.

-----

Last fall I introduced two daylilies with the AHS. I should have waited, because I don't have enough of either plant to sell any fans yet, but I couldn't help myself. I wanted to see how the whole process worked. 

My fall, 2020 intros:

Caligula. Tet, 29" E, re-bloom. three-way branching, semi-evergreen. Nite Bite x Calamity Jane.

Queen Irene. Tet, 28" M, re-bloom, three-way branching, semi-evergreen. God Save the Queen x Arabian Veil.

By 2022 I will likely have enough of each plant to sell a few fans. I also have a few more daylilies that I plan to introduce next fall if they do well again this summer in my garden. They are:

Little Lemon Cake

The Ruby Zebra

Little Rose Red

Peppermint Stripes

Dixie Darling

Henrietta

Dixie Darling and Henrietta are both old-school flowers, and so I may not introduce them. However, I do love them... so maybe? The clear pink color of Henrietta is so beautiful, and both of these plants bloom for over a month straight, have a zillion branches, increase quickly and are hard-core dormants. I just love them! But... they are not fancy. 

Little Lemon Cake is a beautiful yellow with deeper yellow edging, but what I really love about it is that it is such a strong, prolific plant and it also completely resists rust. I had an outbreak of rust in my seedling bed last year (must have come from a plant I bought from the south...) and Little Lemon Cake did not suffer even a bit. What a goddess! 

Little Rose Red is a miniature, and I love her color. She doesn't increase as much as I'd like, though, so we'll see. 

The Ruby Zebra is both vigorous and interesting. Her stripes are sometimes yellowish and sometimes closer to brown and sometimes closer to white. Peppermint Stripes is just a very pleasing flower. The plant also has great branching and height. 

-------

In other news, I've been working on a plan for Four Dog Farm. I know I will become commercial very soon--if in a very small way--as I plan to start selling my introductions. The question is, to what extent do I want to sell my other plants? I certainly have enough to sell... and sell... and sell.... , and it would be great way to keep my farm in check in terms of size. But, it's a lot of work. I packaged up a dozen lilies and sent them to my good friend, Alina, in Maine, just to see what that would be like. Between dividing, digging, cleaning and packing it took me well over a day to just deal with those 12 plants! (I understand line-outs, now. ha! But I don't have any room to make line-outs! Or, maybe I do, but it would require a restructuring of the garden that absolutely seems overwhelming to me.)

I do know that by the end of the summer I would like a functioning Four Dog Farm website from which I can sell my introductions. I also plan to start keeping a blog, even if no one reads it! :) 

Evergreen Daylilies that have Thrived in my zone 6a garden

* Note! This post will likely be very boring to all of those except for northern daylilies growers who want to add evergreen daylilies to their gardens.

I buy daylilies from all over the country, including from southern growers. I do this at my own financial peril. There are a few things to worry about when purchasing daylilies from the south when you live in the north:

• Will it survive both cold temps and frost heave?
• Will it bring rust into my garden (for the summer)?
• Will it be the big, bold plant it appears to be in its southern pictures? 

Even when buying from northern nurseries you have be careful. Big hybridizers often have greenhouses, and they will harbor southern plants, and sometimes sell them. Just because you are purchasing from a nursery in say, Minnesota or some other equally cold state, doesn't mean the daylily you are getting is hardy. Anything bred in the south (outdoors) or within a greenhouse (anywhere) may not survive in your garden if you live in the north.

It's so tempting to buy the southern beauties--their patterns are intricate, their ruffles deliciously gaudy, their colors rich. I can't stop myself from buying them, so I thought I'd write a post on what I've learned for those of you less willing to spend a gazillion dollars on daylilies that may not survive where you live.

The following list consists of daylilies by southern hybridizers and/or evergreen daylilies that have survived and actually thrive here, despite their origin. I've only included plants which (I believe) were bred in the south--as in zone 8 or warmer, and also cultivars introduced only since 2000, not earlier. 

Free the Night, Devito, 2012

Bohemia After Dark, Petit, 2000

Popcorn Pete, Petit, 2002

Gary Bewyck, Hansen, 2013

Ageless Beauty, Stamile, 2001

Answering Angels, Stamile, 2006

Fabulous Black Pearl, Salter, 2012

Raspberries and Ice Cream, Salter, 2012

Triple Cherries, Petit, 2005

An Easy Call, Salter, 2008

Kansas City Kicker, Salter, 2005

Sycamore Bandit, Bell, 2011

Corduroy Eyes, Bell, 2010

Sweet Almond Mint, Pierce, 2012

Fifth Order, Marchant, 2014

Unlock the Stars, Petit, 2005

Bandit Bay, Salter, 2009

Swan Lake Candy, Townsend, 2011

How Lovely You Are, Rice, 2006

Chang Dynasty, Stamile, 2007

Tipped in Rouge, Stamile, 2006

White Noise, Trimmer, 2004

Space Coast Southern Belle, Kinnebrew, 2006

Space Coast Firestarter, Kinnebrew, 2002

The Band Played On, Stamile, 2006

Cherry Burst, Trimmer, 2010

Cultural Bias, Salter, 2008

Crowning Fire, Stamile-Pierce, 2011

Evelyn Kloeris, Carpenter, 2004

Cream Cheese Fluffs, Clinard, 2013

Maryzell, Hansen 2006

Ballroom Waltz, Salter, 2002

Calamity Jane, Trimmer, 2008

God Save the Queen, Morss, 2005

Dark Music, Salter, 2005

Wolverine Eyes, Peat, 2005

Celestial Shores, Stamile, 2007

Destined to See, Grace, 1998

Better by Design, Salter, 2009

The Blue Parrot, Trimmer, 2009

Aztec Headdress, Petit, 2002

Pinwheel Princess, Salter, 2010 

Get Jiggy, Stamile, 2008

Though the Looking Glass, Petit, 2001

Sparks Heir to A Kingdom, Taunton, 2013

Sixth Sense, Hemmskerk, 2005

Ellis Powell, Carpenter, 2006

Safety First, Sattelmeier, 2018

Wild Horses, Trimmer, 1999

Gavin Petit, Petit, 2004

Angelic Song, Stamile, 2001

Space Coast Dragon Prince, Kinnebrew, 2002

Space Coast Gator Eye, Kinnebrew, 2000

Inaha Summer, Bell, 2010

Summer in Versailles, Salter, 2005

Merely Mystical, Salter, 2008

Discarded Beauty, Trimmer, 2009

Cotton Candy Sunset, Clinard, 2015

Honey Lips, Shooter, 2007

I will write my next post on daylilies which have not done well here. For now I will just say that I have learned the hard way that cultivars by Waldrop, Harry and DeVito don't do well here as a general rule. There are always exceptions, of course. But those three I've had particularly bad luck with, though I find their daylilies absolutely beautiful. 

Trying to Understand the Self. Mid-Life, Self-Indulgent Post

Maybe some of you can relate to this. I'm mired in a stage of self-reflection. The pandemic has temporarily halted my frenetic pace. I'm not trying to get here nor there, and my mind seems to have both slowed down and opened up, blinking. Wait a minute. Where am I?

I'm almost fifty. I've been calling myself 50 for the last year, so when the birthday happens it will feel seamless--or even like a gift. I will be turning 50, but I've already been 50 for the last year. I even say to others, "When I turned 50..." It's a bit unhinged.

I live with my father-in-law, Jack. As I write I am watching him act out a dream. He might be eating. He just made the motion of cutting with a knife, and then put something invisible into his mouth, which he opened wide. Now he's chewing. I wish I could post a video, but that would be rather horrible of me, wouldn't it? Now he's dipping something, and has just put it into his mouth. He is asleep, I think, but he has his eyes open. He acts his dreams out like he's a mime.
I've read this might be dementia with Lewy bodies.

When he wakes he will reveal something of the dream; he always does.
"Where is Joe?" (I have no idea who Joe is.) "He was just here. I need to get home."
"Where are you, Dad?"
"I need to get home. I need to pick up Carol. I'm late."
Carol is his wife, my mother in law, who died six years ago. Yesterday he was convinced she had been with him in his bedroom, which wasn't his bedroom in his dream. They had been meeting with Joe, and now they were gone. He said, "I smell a rat." It took me a few moments to understand he was worried that Joe had abducted Carol.

Watching this is fascinating is sad. It makes me contemplate my own mortality every day. How will I go? Who will take care of me? Will I be a burden? There is an answer to that final question: I will be. To someone. My children? My children-in-law? How can I stop this? Can I insist I'm taken to Europe and be allowed to die? Will I have the capability of doing this?

*******
 More self-indulgent self-reflection:

I am passionate and obsessive, and I always go big when I select a project to pursue.  My way of pursuing a project doggedly and with singular focus is more a personality trait than a conscience life philosophy. One thing that has puzzled others about me, and also puzzled me about me, is how I can be so completely absorbed with something for years, and then one day the passion for that particular pursuit dries up, and it moves to the back recesses of my mind. Sometimes the pursuit is picked up again, but just as often it's not.

A recounting of passions.
I will bullet my 20s. My passions in this decade overlapped one another and some continued through the entire decade. 

Ordered early to late:

• Teaching history and English to middle schoolers (the whole decade)  
• The identification of trees, then wildflowers, then birds (ongoing). 
• Andy... my now husband. I spent a lot of obsession and passion on him in this decade. And yes, that was a project of sorts. Just ask him.
• 1997. Trained for and ran the Boston Marathon as a bandit. (1 year)
• Lindy Hop (late twenties). I got quite good. (2 years)
• Children's Literature. At 29 I started working toward a Masters degree at Simmons.
• Vegetable gardening.

In my thirties. The first half of this decade was spent pregnant, nursing, and taking care of infants. Between August 2001 and June 2005 I had three children. During that time I didn't really have projects. Or I did, but my memory of this time is a bit blurred, and I can't completely recapture them. I know I became obsessed with gardening and the identification of all annuals and perennials at some point... 

Anyway, before having my first child in 2001, I decided to do a Master's in Children's Literature. About the time of my second class at Simmons I decided I wanted to become a professor of English Literature. At 30, I was accepted to doctoral work in English at BC--and then got pregnant with my first child.  Or actually, I got pregnant, then got accepted weeks later. That obsession, that of becoming the English professor, dwindled as I became more and more pregnant. Despite having arrived--eg being accepted to do doctoral work at a respectable school--a larger than life feat I didn't think possible for me after my B+ collegiate experience--I declined entrance into the BC program and went back to teaching.  

In my late thirties, after having three children, I became obsessed with fitness--and with running and triathlon in particular. This makes sense, actually. My mid-thirties were spent becoming pregnant, trying to get back my "old body" and then when getting close to that, getting pregnant again. By the time Lara was born I desperately wanted to feel fit again. Those were the years during which I wrote the Iron Matron blog. You can access the archives of that blog here.  In it I rant and blather  about my training and racing from 2006-2014. hose were great years for both writing and fitness. Much like getting accepted to do doctoral work in English, I never dreamed I could conquer long course triathlon like I did.

My obsession with triathlon ended in 2016--although I continued to race until the summer of 2017. In October of 2016 I qualified for the Ironman World Championship at Ironman Maryland. It was my very best Ironman--mostly because I took the bike so slowly due to borderline hypothermia and then then was able to truly execute the IM marathon in a way I had never done before.  Unfortunately, in preparing for it I used up every last ounce of my desire to train. That winter I was diagnosed with quite pronounced anemia, which surely contributed to my lack of desire to train, but even after receiving several intravenous infusions of iron--meant to bring back the Fe in my Iron Matron self-- I lacked any desire to train and race. In June of 2017, after racing in Mont Tremblant, Canada in the 70.3, I retired. No Kona--even though I had qualified for the 2017 WC. I just did not want to continue.

There is a trend here. I finally get what I "want" -- acceptance to a doctoral program -- a bonafide, clear-cut qualification for Kona-- and my obsession and passion... Poof! On to the next thing. What do they say about the chase? Could it be that my actual obsession and passion only have to do with the chase?

Transitions are never easy for me. I'm left empty and bereft when one passion leaves me and a direct replacement isn't immediately obvious. As my triathlon obsession waned I tried returning to school. I entered an MA program in English, became obsessed with Henry James and Edith Wharton, and once again, applied to do doctoral work. That passion was just fleeting, though. Even as I prepared my applications I knew I didn't want to commit to a doctoral program. Instead, I decided to return to teaching. I secured a job in Westborough and taught 8th grade English for a year. That passion was fleeting too, though. Really, I was just grasping to find myself again--looking to old passions and trying to get one to stick.

Currently I am obsessed with daylilies: collecting them, cataloguing them, hybridizing them.

My garden self has been my most constant obsession over the years. It is rooted in a love of identification. I like to be able to name types of things: trees, birds, wildflowers, dogs, garden plants, bees, books. I like to catalog and I like to collect. (I forgot to mention my three year stint as a librarian...)

This isn't a small obsession. I currently grow more than 1,500 registered cultivars and I have about 1400 of my own hybridized cultivars. This spring I've ordered many, many more cultivars, mainly because the obsession has been left to grow undisturbed by other life interventions--driving my kids all over the universe, traveling here and there, appointments now all canceled, coaching put on hold.

I've also been obsessed with writing short stories. My aim is to having something published--somewhere--some small journal that no one will ever read.

These two things have this in common: they are both ways of escaping mortality.

I followed the blog of a man named Lee Pickles for many years. He died in 2018 of heart failure, but before then he was a hybridizer. When he died I made it a point to buy all of his cultivars--or many of them, any way. I look at them with their little labels: Pickles, 2016, Tet, SE. I can no longer read his blog, of course, but I can look at his daylilies--imagine him dabbing pollen from one stigma to the next in his beautiful greenhouse that he was so proud of.
Just to be clear I never met this man. I never even spoke to him. I only know him through his blog.

Someday, I imagine my own name on a label. I want to make beautiful cultivars that will outlive me. I want something of myself, of my work, my effort, my interests, to linger in this world after I am gone.
That is the same with writing. Maybe it's even why I keep returning to keeping a blog.

This is a double-flowering daffodil named Tahiti. Before becoming obsessed with dayliles I was quite obsessed with daffodils.

Here are split-cup daffodil called Pink Wonder, a few pansies and some bleeding heart. One of my daylilies is coming up, though--right by the label. :)

A robin chose to nest in a little tree close to the house. I took this picture, but now I will stay clear of the nest. I don't want bluejays or squirrels figuring out it's there. They are egg robbers.

Might as well start blogging again...

Seeing as we are all stuck at home for the foreseeable future, I thought I'd start writing again. Truth be told, I've been writing this whole time. I just haven't been posting.  But now that everyone is stuck at home, I figure, it's a good time to post my drivel.

I realize that most people do not like to be on lockdown.
I don't like it either, in theory.
But I do sort of like it.

Let's be real. Given the choice I don't actually leave my property unless I'm going to Maine, running with my club, going out to dinner with Andy, or doing something for or with my kids. I've been social distancing for like twenty years at this point. I'm kind of an expert at this.

Under the circumstances I'm not going to Maine, but I'm still running (though not with my club), still eating dinner with Andy (though usually it's frozen dinners), and I'm spending more time with my kids than I have in .... a long time. Because they can't leave. Poor little suckers.

Here are the reasons I actually sort of dig lockdown:

• I can work outside in the garden (Thank you Jesus for any early spring) literally all day and my children do not call me to pick them up, or drop them off, or go to the store to get them xyz or fill in the blank here, because they are home and cannot leave. (Insert maniacal chuckle...)
• I can go on super long runs and no one looks at me like I have three heads. When I see people when I'm out running they give me six feet (awesome!) and nod like, I get it. Of course, my running has nothing to do with social distancing, but you know, whatever. I'll take an I get it look over a WTF, didn't I see you out running yesterday?--you overachieving, skinny, do-gooder, which is the look I generally get -- or got up until a few weeks ago.)
• I have an excuse to have hair that needs cutting and dying, nails that need manicuring, and clothing that needs updating. I always have these things, of course. It's the *excuse* part that works for me.
• I can order take out and it's viewed as a support of local establishments as opposed to the fact that I freaking hate to cook.
• My kids! My kids are home! They are miserable, but (completely selfishly) I like having them around. I feel like some higher power granted me this last span of time to be with them. Mothers of older teenagers, I bet you know what I mean.
• I have read (or listened to) 21 books so far this calendar year, and that's because I can't leave home, right? (Lockdown is definitely good in terms of attempting to achieve my 2020 Good Reads Challenge goal.)
• I have an excuse to spend time on Facebook since I can't see these people in real life. (Not that I see anyone in real life normally, but again, whatever.) Also, people are not posting as much political shit because they are too busy posting funny videos of life stuck at home. 
• My dogs are loving this time. They are in heaven. Every one of their humans is home 24/7 and ready to snuggle down. 

There are a lot of reasons to dislike what is happening right now--like people are dying and many more will die going forward and our health care workers are over-stressed and exhausted and as a country we were totally unprepared for this pandemic, despite that experts warned over and over again that this would likely happen eventually. But I'm trying not to focus on those things, and I don't plan to write about them here. I plan to write about my ongoing daylily project, my gardening, my observations of the birds at my feeder and the behavior of the animals and insects in my landscape. 

and other stuff, too. Other stuff will probably comprise the bulk of my writing. I have trouble staying on topic.

I will leave you with some pictures: 

I've mostly been raking and (re) labeling my lilies this week. I still have a very, very long way to go. I usually allow things to get messy in the fall going into the winter. I don't do a lot of cutting back of my perennials because I find that old foliage and leaf cover insulate my plants when we don't have snow cover. I still lose many daylilies every winter do to frost heave. I also lose daylilies I've purchased from southern growers. Still, I keep buying the southern varieties. My goal is to create hybrids that are southern patterned, ornate and lush, but that still survive in the north. I often use southern daylilies as breeding stock, so I take the chance on them each spring, and accept that I lose quite a few each winter. 

The pictures are now and then. The now is (obviously) the brown, leafy, half raked March garden. The then are photos of the same areas in July. I post these before and after pictures-- or after and before -- mostly for me. I have to keep the faith that someday the property will be gorgeous again-- and all spring work is worth it. 

This is a space I call the "butterfly" garden. I've been clearing it and planting gradually for a few years now. I think this summer it will finally come into its own.

I have to figure out what to do with my lovely compost bins. hmmm

 This is Henry searching for chipmunks. He's a voracious chipmunk/mouse hunter.

In my raking I found this nest. It's so sturdy! I can't figure out what the exterior is made out of. There is some Easter grass in there--or maybe it's not Easter grass, but that's what it reminds me of. You can see the designer made a pouch for the eggs, and that the exterior is made from different materials than the inside. There was still some downy fur inside the nest from the chicks.
Amazing construction.

 A rare shot of three of the four dogs (Henry, Hazel, Ernie) of Four Dog Farm, all sniffing around for whatever dogs sniff around for. Missing is Chica. She's an old girl and spends most of her time inside.

The final pictures are taken from the basement of the new 2019 seedling stock. It will be time to harden these plants off very soon. I use tree pots to grow my seedlings. They are quite space efficient. I have about 500 seedlings growing from my 2019 seeds. Many will not make it when brought into the garden. I don't coddle my plants. It is a survival of the fittest type of game. You have to be strong, or you will be culled! I have about 400 survivors from my 2018 seeds, and many of those will bloom this summer. I honestly cannot wait. This will also be the summer that I start culling the 2017 seedlings. I wanted to give them at least two seasons of flowering before deciding whether to keep or throw away. Sometimes a plant just needs a bit more time to show its stuff. 

Okay, I'm off for a run. 

I hope everyone reading is surviving this pandemic. If you are a fellow daylily enthusiast, I suspect that like me you are using this time as you always have--on your plants!  

End of the Summer Gardening

The conundrum with keeping a gardening blog is that during the months I want most to record and share my gardening thoughts, I'm actually spending all of my time gardening and hence find no time to write!

The garden on Labor Day weekend:

The brightly colored, immature petunias I used to fill in garden gaps early in the season now crawl like flowerless green snakes over everything.  My battle against pokeweed, bindweed and black swallow-wort have been fought and lost. Crabgrass and carpetweed blanket the garden paths I so carefully cleared and maintained early in the summer. Perennials at their prime in July look haggard and worn, brow-beaten by the sun and ready to call it quits for the season. Alas, the garden officially look like a very-tired, very brown jungle. 

Sigh.

A few perennials keep up the good fight. For example, the black-eyed susans, pictured here, just keep on kicking. They basically comprise the whole garden at this point. The purple bush in this picture is, I think, a butterfly bush of some sort. I thought for the longest time it was giant hyssop... but sadly, I'm really not sure what it is. Why do I not label things when I buy them?! I only label my daylilies, reasoning that I just need to remember the most general things about my other plants--like their common names. For example, this is black-eyed susan, yes, but it is a black-eyed susan that blooms only in the late summer, is 6 ft tall, has delicate branching and petit flowers and spreads like nobody's business. But the specific cultivar name? No idea. I'm not even sure it's a cultivar. But with the big purple plant I can't even remember the most basic thing... its common name.

Here is a close-up of the purple plant . Anyone able to identify it?  It know it looks a bit like loosestrife, but it's not that. Its base is woody.

Onward.

Although my gardens are a mess and currently dominated only by black-eyed susans, my daylily seedling bed, though still mostly green and flowerless, now sports a few blooms.  Some of these blooms are quite pedestrian, but some have also been surprisingly gorgeous. I tend to value those (still un-bloomed) seedlings with parental lineages that are new, edgy and cut-throat.  Oh la la! What kind of bloom will I see if I crossed this 2017 crazy spider with this 2016 luscious, petit beauty? Those pairings that include one or both parents from older lineages thrill me less. Yet... it's often those pairings that surprise me in terms of their elegance and beauty. I think that the newer daylilies I use in my hybridizing are often so gorgeous and unique already that it's hard to top them. Right now I'm talking strictly blooms. These plants are still too much in their infancy to know habit--and, of course, it's possible even the blooms will change between now and next season.

Because I'm new to hybridizing (I've really only been hybridizing in earnest for the last two years), everything about it still surprises and fascinates me. For example, I find it so interesting how you can have seeds from the same exact pod create such different looking flowers. It makes me think about children (human children, I mean) and how one parental combination can create such different looking progeny. It's also fascinating how when pairing dayliles (or humans, or dogs... or anything) beautiful + beautiful doesn't always equal beautiful, and common/boring + common/boring can create something exceptionally unique and gorgeous. Most fascinating of all--sometimes a seedling looks nothing like either parent and you think, Where did THAT come from? In instances like those I then feel the need to check out the parents' parents, and then the parents' parents' parents to see if I can find evidence that I didn't actually mislabel the cross, and that's why the seedling look nothing like either parent.

For example, this seedling just bloomed yesterday.

Very pretty! It's a cross between Kansas City Kicker (Stamile 2005) and Doma Knaresborough (Petit '94). Frankly, it doesn't look at all like either parent-- at all.

Here' a pictorial family tree: 

X 

Betty Warren Woods                     X  Shisado                                  =   Doma Knaresborough

 =

French Cavilier                        X   Sabine Bauer                      =       Kansas City Kicker

                                               

                Doma Knaresborough                 x                      Kansas City Kicker        =                           

                                                          New Seedling  bloomed 8/31

Bizzare, huh? The real question is whether my labeling is off. Kansas City Kicker is right next to Sparks Heir to a Kingdom in my garden.

Sparks Heir to A Kingdom

Might it, in fact, be the pod parent? But I don't think so. I label each cross immediately after I have make it, and so it's unlikely that I would label the pod parent incorrectly. But still....

This is the problem I have with hybridizing right now. I trust myself and my labeling, but not 100%. I need to develop a labeling system that is fail-proof.  You'd think it wouldn't be laborious or complicated, but it is, at least for me. I must be so diligent to place a label on the bloom immediately after I make a cross, because I forget or mix things up if I make several crosses and then expect myself to remember them.

I also have trouble making sure I use a label medium that will not allow the written words to fade in the sun. I always label with a black Sharpie, but some tags hold Sharpie better than other over time. This is even more a problem with seedlings. I like the idea of having the label under the ground, attached to the fan of the plant, but when I first transplant the seedlings they are too small to have a label attached in this way.  I find that often I won't catch that a label has faded until it's too late, and I find myself holding the label to the light, desperately hoping to be able to decipher what it said!

I hope to write a bit more consistently now late summer has arrived. Even if no one reads my drivel it's great to have a record of my gardening thoughts. I leave you with a picture of Hazel, who has been playing in the pokeweed.