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!