It's beautiful here in the north.
It's like Narnia when Lucy first enters through the wardrobe.
Still, I'm annoyed that the White Witch stills holds my gardens in her icy grip. She's had her seasonal reign. Enough already.

Sunrise over the back gardens.

Today it was blustery and 30 degrees, so no melting yet. My smallest dog, Henry, a doxie/chihuahua mix, got stuck in a drift this morning and I had to pull him out. 

I have a little pond in my yard. It's frozen right now, but in the summer it has a waterfall and it used to have koi in it. Unfortunately, the UV filter we had running in the pond broke last winter, unbeknowst to us, and subsequently green algae took over the pond in early spring and killed off the koi. It was sad and also made me feel extremely guilty. For a long time we did not fix the UV filter. Why bother? We had no fish to keep alive anymore. Weep.

And then the frogs moved in. Oh man did we have frogs! They loved that algae. We mostly had American Bullfrogs, Green Frogs, and Leopard Frogs. My husband and children seemed relatively nonplussed about these wonderful amphibians (my kids are teenagers...), but I became smitten! At one point my husband (Andy) cleaned the pond and replaced the UV filter. The pond returned to its pristine loveliness, but I did not spy quite so many frogs after that point, which worried me. Where had they gone? Were they suffering since we had disrupted their home? Gradually, the frogs returned. I think they might have just been horrified that Andy had emptied and refilled the pond, and they took off for several weeks before daring to return.

Green Frog

Northern Leopard Frog. These little dudes are super cool looking. They are iridescent in the sun.

American Bull Frog

Andy turned the UV filter off for the winter, and before the last snow storm I noted the green algae had begun to grow. It got me thinking about my frogs. I so want them to return this summer. So, this morning I researched how to best create an attractive environment for frogs so that they will come.

It turns out the reason my pond became a frog mecca last summer was because we had inadvertently already created the perfect frog environs. They love algae (no surprise there), they like small ponds in areas that have plenty of bugs to eat (check), and they like ponds that have gradual, shallow entries into them. The one area in which I had been remiss is that I didn't have any little frog getaways--pots turned sideways and half buried and other little crevices that serve as cool, damp hiding places. I'm on it. I'm going to make some fab frog hide-a-ways and place them around the pond--just as soon as the foot of snow surrounding it melts....

Onto daylilies.

Yesterday I moved a hundred or so daylilies from the basement to the first floor of the house and placed them on a card table close to a sunny window. The goal was to free up some downstairs space to place a few heated mats and get some annuals and vegetables going before it's too late. I'm worried these daylilies will not do well by the window, but I also can't figure out another solution.

In just a few weeks, even if there is snow still on the ground, I plan to start hardening  my infant daylilies off.
Our last freeze is usually in late April. When do those of you hybridizing in the north start to harden off your babies?

History of.

This is Patrick Stamile's "Chang Dynasty." There's no reason for this picture. I just love the flower.  Also, "Chang Dynasty" is a born and bred, evergreen, Floridian plant, but it does well here in my Massachusetts garden. You just never know which of those Southern beauties will do well here. This is one!

Last summer was the first summer I really and truly hybridized. The previous summer (2016) I dabbed a little pollen, but only a few times, and I harvested only about 25 seeds, total. Some of those seeds I planted in the fall. Nothing came up last spring. The rest I germinated indoors. Of those, only a handful made it--all from a cross between "Custard Candy" and "Strawberry Candy." I ended up with three plants that I put in the garden last summer. One of those plants bloomed in mid-September. It was such an exciting day... (I know, I know. It's a little sad and pathetic that I was so excited about seeing a cross between those two Stamile classics.) But it was my first flower! And, miraculously, it looked like... drumroll.....

a mix between "Custard Candy" and "Strawberry Candy." :)  Here's a picture:

I decided to call it "Mary's Very First Baby." And I'm registering it. Just kidding! Of course I'm not. Still, it will forever remain in my garden even though it's so very pedestrian. It's still my first daylily seedling to bloom and I love her. 

Anyway.  I made quite a few crosses last summer and I suspect I will have many more babies flowering in 2018. 

Here's how I went about hybridizing this summer. Each morning I'd go for a slow walk through the gardens and I'd cross flowers that happened to be blooming. It was all very planned and scientific. cough.

Sometimes I did have a question in mind before making a cross. For example:

• What will happen if I cross this near white lily with this near black one?
• What will happen if I cross tall to short?
• What will happen if cross this pretty flower with this fabulous branching?
• What will happen if I cross this hybridized, grown and raised in the south plant by this plant hybridized, grown and raised in the north?

Sometimes, though, I had no reason. This Tet had a flower blooming, and so did this one. So I crossed them. I've read a lot about hybridizing at this point, and the one thing every hybridizer says is that you must have a specific goal if you want to make great plants. However, deciding on a goal at this point in my nascent hybridizing career seems a bit like a newbie runner planning to a run a specific goal time without ever having raced a step.  So, I made my goal this: cross everything under the sun and see what happens. 

Although this approach might seem naive and uninformed to serious hybridizers, it did help me understand the fertility (or lack of) of each of my plants. I learned some plants take seed with just a dot of pollen given at any old time of day, whereas some plants won't set seed no matter what kind of provisions are made for them. Some plants set seed, but the seeds never completely mature, or even if they do mature, they do not germinate.  Some plants create viable, strong seeds in every pod. Some plants form pods that never grow, or only grow in a few chambers, or only produce one or two seeds. Some plants pack 30 seeds into one pod!  I learned that crossing a Dip to a Tet can result in a pod, but that pod will be empty. I learned that even if I am absolutely positively sure I will remember the cross I just made, five minutes later I will have forgotten it. I have to log the cross before I make it, and tag the flower as soon as the cross is made.  My little brain seems unable to handle the daily must remember game. I learned that pods ripen faster when it's hot, and more slowly as the weather cools, so making a cross in mid-August may not allow for a pod's complete maturation.  I learned other things, too. Too many to list.

By the end of the 2017 season  I had collected more than 1000 seeds.  Some of these seeds still remain bagged in my refrigerator. Some rotted after a month in the fridge, most likely because I harvested them too early or put them away before they were fully dry or because of some other novice error. The rest of the seeds, about 750, I tried to germinate. I figured my success rate would be low enough that I would only actually grow a quarter of that. Remember, the previous year very few of my 25 seeds germinated. But I was wrong! About 650 germinated, and I now have about 620 or so plants. Some of the seedlings died. Some were albino. But most survived.  

I planted my first seeds indoors in late October. My reasoning was... 

Okay. There was no reasoning. I just wanted to plant them. I knew it meant that I'd be using Grow Lights for like 7 months, but I've already spent so much on my gardening "hobby". What's a few more dollars in electricity and heat? Right? Clearly I need a large, heated greenhouse. I put it on my birthday list, but so far the reaction from my non-gardening mate has been a guffaw and a snort.

This is my basement set up. I started out putting three or four seedlings into gallon pots, with plans to give each seedling its own gallon pot once it began to look squished. I quickly realized this would not be efficient enough in terms of space. I have a big basement, but I have limited grow lights and I'm not sure purchasing any more at this point would engender tremendous marital affection.  Next year for sure. I ended up buying tree pots and transplanted each lily, one to a pot. This has worked quite well.  It definitely saves space, and I think the plants are quite happy. They are simply growing vertically rather than horizontally.

My biggest plants are now about 4.5 months old.  This plant is a cross between Salter's "Arabian Veil" and Peck's 1969 classic, "May Colvin." Random, I know.

My youngest plants are not quite 2 months old.  This is a cross between Salter's "Nordic Night" and Patrick Stamile's "Dixie Sunrise" (DS is another evergreen, Floridian daylily that does very well here in zone 5/6, suburban Boston, MA.)

By the time they are put into the garden, my biggest plants will be almost 6 months old. My hope is that some of these older plants actually bloom this summer. Fingers crossed.