lids luncheon 2018

Yesterday was the annual LIDS luncheon. After a couple months of hibernation, it was nice to see the usual friendly faces of other Daylily enthusiasts.

The speakers were legendary hybridizers David Kirchhoff and Mort Moss from Daylily WOrld. David is known for reds and doubles. Mort is known for patterns. Their talk, illustrated by beautiful pictures, focused on their move from Florida to Kentucky.

One thing that's really interesting about these guys is the number of cultivars that they named after celebrities. I didn't catch the exact story, but it involves a garden, near the Country Music Hall of Fame, that has daylilies for a lot of the inductees. These celebrities ask Kirchhoff to name cultivars after them, and he shows them what's available and they pick the ones they like.

If only there were a simple way to get him to name one after me... I mean simpler than becoming a country music star.

I had planned not to buy anything during the auction. Since I'm generally more interested in getting daylilies that are pretty than getting the recent cultivars (for the sake of their recentness), I'm trying to focus on getting the cheaper things that are available. And for a while I was good. Several plants went up for bid and I resisted the urge.

Bessie Smith (Kirchhoff-D., 2016)

But then he put up "Bessie Smith." My great grandmother's maiden name was Bessie Smith. How could I not bid on it? I'm gonna digress here with a story about Great grandma Bessie. She lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Near my grandparents in Greensburg. When I was a kid we would, as a family, visit and stay with the grandparents in Greensburg. During those visits we would go to Pittsburgh to see Bessie. One year we had our puppy, Max, with us. I don't remember why. Anyway, we left him in the car. because Grandma Bess was really old and Max was a golden retriever puppy. It was a cold overcast day so there was no danger of the car overheating. Anyway, when Grandma Bess realized that we had the dog in the car she made us go down and get him and bring him up. By the time we got up, she was busy making him a meal. Hot dogs, some cold cuts...anything she could find in her fridge. Back to the point. I won the bidding for Bessie Smith.

And once the seal was broken...

Grape Pearls (Morss, 2015)

I bid on a dozen or so plants, and ended up coming away with four (including the aforementioned Bessie Smith.

Red Revival (Kirchhoff-D., 2015

The others I bought were Red Revival, Violet Muse and Grape Pearls. I loved the color on these three. More and more I'm finding recently that I am liking simple-looking blooms like these. There have been a lot of introductions recently that have pink and yellow, with ruffles and teeth. And they look like frosting flowers on birthday cakes. At this point I prefer less complexity. I also note that, with Grape Pearls, I was really sold on the fact that it has a high bud count and lots of branching, and that it clumps up a lot.

Violet Muse (Morss, 2016)