flower show '24

2022 marked the first time I entered the LIDS flower show. Before then, I had clerked at shows and used that as my reason for not entering. That strategy worked until someone noted that a person can enter a show and be a clerk. What a person cannot do is be a judge and an entrant in the same show. I have no interest in being a judge, and am not qualified tom judge a show anyway. But I enjoy clerking.

This year I agreed to enter again. I really didn't want to -- it means getting up super early to prepare. But the club has been shrinking lately -- due largely to demographics and deer. And I felt the club really could use all the entries it could get. My 20 plants (the entry limit is 20 plants per household) -- less, considering that some would get damaged in transit -- would make a difference.

As I groomed my scapes for entry, I didn't worry excessively. I got a bunch of ribbons two years ago, so I had decided that ribbons didn't matter to me anymore. I was doing it for the club. So my attitude was somewhat lackadaisical. "I don't care about ribbons" was my mantra, and that really made it a lot easier to relax while I groomed. Some brown marks on the foliage? ugly scars from old buds? Who cares. These'll be pretty flowers for the public to appreciate. I felt a twinge of shame when someone on the placement team summoned me to say that I should be grooming my scapes better before submitting them. And, after that, I did try to do a better job. But most of my entries were already in and I had come without the tools you really need for the job. Instead of an X-Acto blade, I had my fingernails. Instead of a little brush, I had my breath.

And I wasn't really worried -- confident in my conviction that all that mattered was helping with the number of entries. But the judging began, and I had to follow my team of judges around, obeying their instructions. And I soon found my convictions going out the door. As the judges looked over one of my entries they were merciless. "Did they even groom this at all? Look at this!" Of course, the judges didn't know that this was one of my entries. So when they noted some imperfections in the petals, and one looked at me and said "I would have just thrown it in the garbage," she wasn't trying to get personal. It stung, but I had to just stand there and not show any emotion. But at that moment I started wishing I had taken the grooming more seriously.

Fortunately, that was among the worst of my entries. Though another one lost a lot of points because I had failed to remove seed pods. That was actually a surprise. You don't want to remove buds (unless they're interfering with the bloom), so it never occurred to me that you had to remove seed pods. Live and learn.

But when one of my entries earned a purple ribbon -- scoring a 97, I was starting to get some hope. Maybe it would be a candidate for Best in Show. That thought lasted until the next flower was judged a 98. But now there was hope. And, with it, there were recriminations. If only I had groomed better, that 97 could have been a 99 -- or maybe 100. BUT NOOOOO! I had to relax through the grooming, and now I was paying the price. Damnit.

But a little later, one of my entries (Run N The Green Light) earned a 99! Though another plant in that class also scored a 99, the judges decided that mine was better. And the euphoria hit as I realized that I had won a best in class. In the end, I scored another best in class with Anniversary Lace. But I didn't even realize that at first, since it was judged by the other team of judges.

So now, in the second show I had entered, I had two flowers on the winner's table. I didn't get Best in Show, which comes with a cash prize, but I guess my results were pretty good -- especially considering my attitude going in. Next time I'll actually try to win.

i was a middle-aged flower show entrant

When I first started buying daylilies, I figured that I'd never be the kind of person who uses markers in his garden.* Eventually, though, I started using marker stakes and labels.** But I figured I wasn't the type of guy who got involved with the flower shows. Then I started clerking.*** But I figured I would never actually enter a flower show. And that wall fell yesterday.

Having signed up as a clerk, I was pretty confident that I had an excuse not to enter flowers in the show. But I was reminded that clerks can enter. And we really need entries—this being the first show since COVID, there was real concern about whether we'd have enough entries to fill the venue.¹ So, with reservations, I got up early this morning, hoping that, despite the rain last night, I would find sufficient good-looking blooms to enter. At that point I had no interest in winning ribbons; I was primarily interested in helping the club with entries.

I know that lots of people cut scapes the night before, guessing which ones look likely to bloom. Maybe that approach makes sense. But for me, I decided to cut in the morning. And cut I did, until we were running out of time and had to go. I had cut fourteen scapes in all, though the flower broke off one of them before I could do anything, so I brought 13 with me for the show. I would lose another one—Spider Man (Durio, 1982)—while grooming it, so in the end I had 12 entries.

While I had started out with no interest in how well my entries would eventually do, my competitive juices started flowing when I got there and saw others grooming their scapes for the show. Suddenly I was struck by the idea that maybe I could win something. Someone had to win Best in Show, so why not me? And there would be all those Best in Category winners. I could have a shot. But what got me most was the thought of coming away empty-handed.

So I started grooming. I've never groomed scapes before, so I made mistakes. I mentioned above that I lost Spider Man in the process. I was trimming the site of an old bud and got too close to the base of the bloom. It snapped off. And I know -- yeah, I can't prove it, but I just know -- that that Spider Man would have won Best in Show if only it hadn't broken off. But that wasn't my only mistake. I scraped some brown spots too much. And I missed others. None of my entries were perfect, but I felt they were good enough. They would be pleasing to the eyes of the general public, even if they provoked disdain from the judges.

Clerking was largely the same experience as before—except for when the judging panel I was working for was judging my entries. It took all my willpower to maintain control as they evaluated the first one—Mynelle's Starfish (Hayward-M., 1982)—and commented on how it could have been groomed better. But I heard that and similar comments a lot as they evaluated the various entries, so I was not the only insufficient groomer. That first one won a red ribbon, so I felt a bit of pride. I wouldn't go home ribbonless. Then I noticed that the other judge's panel had awarded one of my entries—Harem Scarem (Millikan-B., 1992)—a blue ribbon. Hey, this was getting cool! And so we went along, as I struggled to keep my yap shut. Watching as flowers were judged, keeping in mind how long before the next time they'd get to one of mine. The names of the entrants were hidden, but I could tell from the handwriting which ones were mine.

In the end, all 12 of my entries won ribbons. I scored two purple ribbons, four blue and six red. I list them below for posterity. Sadly, neither of my purple ribbon winners won Best in Category, so I didn't win Best in Show. Maybe next year.

My entries:

• Purple
• Dublin Elaine (Joiner, 1987)
• Missy Moo (Sayers, 2006)
• Blue
• Harem Scarem (Millikan-B., 1992)
• Little Granny (Faggtard, 1981)
• Red Rain (Whitacre, 1988)
• Whispering Violet Water Waltz (Sayers, 2014)
• Red
• Becky Lynn (Guidry, 1977)
• Bed Head (Howard-R., 2017)
• Dietmar's Wisdom (Elliot-D., 2016)
• Elizabeth Salter (Salter, 1990)
• Exotic Love (Stevens-Seawright, 1987)
• Mynelle's Starfish (Hayward-M., 1982)

For what it's worth,  Best in Show went to the Turkiew family (again) for Garden Fairy (Reed, 2018).

________________________

*Technically, not true. When I first bought daylilies I was blissfully unaware that that labels and such were a thing. But please humor me and play along.
**And that has generally gone well. With some hiccups. The worst hiccup was a couple years a go when a herd of feral backhoes ran wild in my yard.
***In an early post in this blog I wrote about my experiences clerking. Reading it now, it makes me cringe.
¹The Horticultural Center at Planting Fields Arboretum.
²As much as I'd like to claim that this makes me a superb flower-show enterer, the fact is that in this venue and under these conditions, you have to try hard for a flower not to win any ribbon. Or you have to have the misfortune of being the fourth-best (or worse) entry of a given cultivar—in a field in which most entries were the only examples of their cultivars.

lids newsletter -- fall, 2021

I'm a bit late on this. A month late. I edit the semi-annual LIDS Newsletter. I distributed the Fall issue at last month's meeting (and then by email). I meant to share it here. You can read it below in all its four-page glory. There's an article about The 5th Man, the new documentary about LIDS member, Paul Limmer. Following that is an article about how to take cuttings. Finally, there's a brief list of new cultivars introduced by LIDS members.

Enjoy! And join LIDS if you haven't already done so.

regional convention 2021

Two years ago, LIDS hosted the Region 4 Summer Meeting. That was the first Daylily convention I attended. I think we were planning to attend the Region 4 Summer Meeting in Connecticut last year, but that got cancelled (OK, postponed) because of COVID. Maybe we weren't planning to attend. I don't remember for sure.

At any rate, that meeting was postponed until this year, and Blair and I attended. So this was my first "away" daylily event. Of course, despite the fact that things are opening up in this post-COVID reality,* the event was scaled back in many ways.

Because of various logistical issues, we were only able to take one day for the convention. So we missed most of the open gardens. I really wish we had been able to see more, but...c'est la vie.

We did make it to the D'Esopos' garden (see accompanying pictures). Though they don't have any daylilies, theire garden is a must-see. Chrissie and John D'Esopo do all the work themselvs and have turned their garden -- full of evergreens and conifers -- into an amazing shrubtastic fantasy world.

After the business meeting, hosted by the Krodels, I participated in the garden judging workshop. I went through the same workshop two years ago at the end of that Regional Meeting, but never followed up on the paperwork needed to get credit for taking the workshop and become a garden judge. I won't follow up this time either. I enjoy the workshops, and the information I learn by attending them. But for the time being I have no need to become a judge. Even if it would mean getting a vote on the Stout Medal winner.

Each attendee was given a daylily fan. We got Heavenly Curls (Gossard, 2000) and Zoot Sims (Bachman, 2003). Since Heavenly Curls is cream-colored, we'll be putting it in the little memorial garden we've been building for Sharon's cat, Cream, who passed away last month. I'm not sure where we'll put Zoot Sims, but that's a nice tall one.

Next year in the Finger Lakes!

___________________________
*Yeah, yeah...I know...Delta variant, remaskings, yada yada. Don't get me started.

what makes a neighborhood

It's a nice Sunday afternoon. We're at home Sundaying when the doorbell rings.

At the door are Elsa and Marcos, two people whom we we don't know. They were walking by our house and saw the daylily markers and wondered what they symbolized.

Blair dropped what she was doing, and explained the labels, the cultivars., etc. She told them to come back later in the season and she'll  give them some. It all wasn't a big deal, And yet Marcos explained that they were hesitant to ring the doorbell. What if we came out screaming at them to leave us alone?

I grew up promising determined to never be a "get-off-my-lawn" type of guy. And that's an influence on the fact that we have a park-bench style seat and a bench swing on the front yard. I enjoy it when I look out the window and see neighborhood people hanging out in the front yard.

So, Elsa and Marcos, the worst I'd do is tell you that I don't have time to talk. But feel free to look. Bloom season starts late next month.

short stout markers

One of the things that I have found particularly frustrating about Blair's and my daylily hobby is labelling. Once we got into it enough label our daylilies we started using one of the popular types of marker stakes. This kind consists of a tall -- they come in various sizes, generally between one and two feet -- thin dowel with a hinged plate attached at one end.

The idea is to put the label on the flat part of the plate.

These work reasonably well -- to a degree. But there seems to be a problematic fragility to these stakes. They seem to get damaged easily. They get bent out of shape, they come out of the dirt. And sometimes the hinged plate comes off the dowel. For people like me, who are less than fastidious about keeping charts of the locations of various cultivars, this can be real trouble for a garden. Marked pants become NOIDs*. There are plenty of other, similar marker. Many have two stakes that hit the ground. But I'm skeptical about them being much better.

This hit us extremely hard last year, as a pack of wild backhoes and forklifts ran amok in our garden. A lot of our garden was damaged or destroyed, and parts that weren't had more than the usual amount of lost markers. As Blair and I look to recover what we can of the garden, we talked about buying markers.

And Blair suggested we try ordering something that's very different.

These new stakes we ordered are much shorter, but the part that goes into the ground is stouter. And they're made of one piece of metal. I made one label out as a test -- it'll go in the ground tomorrow.

On the downside, I think it'll be harder to read the cultivar name and information, since that will be much lower to the ground and not angled for convenient viewing. But on the upside, I doubt that these will die at nearly the rate of the old ones.

Fingers crossed.

___________________________________

*NOIDs = No IDs
 

floral fridays: let's taste some daylilies

Maybe you're looking for ways to jazz up your salads? Here's a handy guide to how various daylilies stack up against each other. Well, 14 cultivars, anyway...

Ice Carnival: 4
Bed Head: 3
War Horse: 3
Fixed Income: 4
Red Revival: 1
Lilly and Petals: 1
Exotic Love: 2
Delight Fisher: 1
Mynelle's Starfish: 3
Bama Bound: 5
Laughing Giraffe: 1
Spider Man: 3
Flash of Javelins: 4
Space Junk: 2

my new adventures in pollination

On Wednesday (I think it was Wednesday, but dang these days flow into each other) morning I went outside for my daily walk around the garden, Asher joined me. Blair did too, but she always does. Asher joining me was out of the ordinary. And somehow it ended up being a science lesson hybridizing daylilies.

I keep wanting to do my on hybridizing, but if you want to do it right it's an involved process, and it takes several years. I actually made an effort a couple years ago. I got tags and I spent a bunch of time cross-pollinating. I got some good seeds. I wrapped them in damp paper towel, then in ziploc bags (which were properly labelled), and into the refrigerator. I forgot about them, and somewhere down the road someone threw them out.

Since then, I've been kind of lukewarm on the idea. I'd love to leave my mark on the daylily world. And I already have a few names that I'd like to use:

• Becky Bradshaw
• Heeblewenzinko D'Foogy
• Axiom of Choice
• One Dollar for the Post Stamp Cost

Anyway, back on Wednesday, as I was making my rounds and taking pictures, I started talking to Asher about pollination. I was showing him the stamens and the pistils. And I noticed that the pistils looked...receptive. It's something I had never noticed years ago, but this time I did. So I asked Asher if he wants to try pollinating. To show him, I pulled a stamen off a Flash of Javelins bloom, and brought it over to pollinate Spider Man. And then, with a stamen from Spider Man I returned the favor to Flash of Javelins.

Asher was into it. But his first attempt was to try crossing Flash of Javelins with Space Junk. And that gave me my opening to explain that there are tets and there are dips. You cross tets with tets and dips with dips. Not one with the other.* So I showed him that some of the ID tags have asterisks after the cultivar name to indicate that the plant is a tet. And he was off to the races.

The only problem with all of this is that I didn't have anything to tag the flowers that he had pollinated. So if I get any good-looking seed pods I won't know who the father is. And that means that if this is the fresh start of my hybridizing program, it'll start with incomplete parentage information. But (if the ADS database is any indicator), that's not an insurmountable problem.

I know myself well enough to know there's a really good chance that nothing will come of this. But I'll be checking for seed pods and watching them. And maybe when the time comes I'll be able to get Asher interested in hybridizing with me. This could be the start.

And maybe I'll finally be able to register a flower called "Lo K'darkah."

*For the reader who is not familiar, this has to do with the plant's genetics. Generally speaking, some daylilies are diploid ("dip") and some are tetraploid ("tet"). Tets have twice as many chromosomes as dips, so when you cross daylilies you need to match ploidy. Strictly speaking I think I recall hearing that under some circumstances you can cross a tet with a dip but you end up with problems. I don;t remember the details.

floral fridays: ahs online auction and bargain plant sale

Since COVID forced the cancellation of the AHS convention, they had an online daylily auction and an online bargain plant sale. Blair and I participated in each. Between the plants we bought from the auction, the ones we bought from the bargain plant sale and the other bonus plants we got, I think we ended up with something like a dozen new (for us) cultivars. And that includes three of of Jan Joiner's 2020 intros.

But rather than type it all out, I'll just share the unboxing video...

Left unanswered is the fundamental question: Did we get the verb "plant" because it's what we do to plants? Or did we get the noun "plant" because they are things that we plant?

floral fridays -- the ditchlily chronicles

I got a text from a friend of mine* from work.

It read "Day Lilly?" and had this picture.

At work, a large subset of the actuarial department knows me as the one who's really into gardening, and particularly daylilies. This guy in particular is part of my inner circle of friends -- he was the first person to train me when I started, so I've known him for more than three decades. So he felt comfortable asking me about it. And, yes, I know he spelled "daylily" wrong -- but I didn't see any need to correct him.

I wrote back, "Yes. Where? Was it planted on purpose?" I was concerned. In the picture it looked like a wild daylily -- one of the ones that are very aggressive and hard to get rid of. I was thinking that it might be in his garden. And if it was, I felt I should warn him.

He responded. "Across the street from my parents. It's on the street side of the sidewalk so I'm wondering if the owner planted it or some birds and the bees stuff happened."

"Looks like what some daylily folk derisively call a 'ditchlily.' The orange wild ones are invasive, and can be hard to get rid of. Is there a reason you asked? Or just curious?" I felt better having issued the warning, even though it wasn't in my friend's yard. It wasn't even in his father's yard. It was in the yard across the street from his father. But I was wondering why he bothered asking me.

"My dad said 'that's a day lilly' and I had no idea if that was true."

Now I was really puzzled. Why would his father -- an elderly Orthodox Rabbi who (to the best of my knowledge) has never had much interest in gardening -- point that out? "He was right. It is a daylily. But as I noted, it looks like one of the invasive ones." I felt I had to sound the warning again.

A few days later it seemed the conversation had died. We were back on other topics. Then he sent me another photo:

"What it looks like now," he wrote.

At least I could now confirm that these were ditchlilies. I could also ask him the burning question. "I was gonna ask...I don't imagine that, out of the blue, your father pointed to a flower and said 'that's a daylily.' Guessing you saw the funny orange flower and asked what it was?" And I still had to remind him that these were invasive. "Judging from the picture alone, those are the invasive ditchlilies. Daylilies come in lots of sizes, colors and bloom habits."

He quoted my message -- the "out of the blue" part, and wrote "That's exactly what happened! I go every day or two to take him for a walk. And he said 'hey! Day lillies"

"You're BS ing me..."

"Nope. He was looking to make conversation."

"So you had to fact check him..."

Well, my friend's father had his facts straight. Maybe I can get him to join LIDS...

*I won't repeat his name here. Suffice to say he shares a name with a celebrity. But he's not famous, except among people who know him.

floral fridays -- a visit from stella

I'm generally not much for the pale peach-colored daylilies. I tend to prefer the bright reds and deep purples. But for some reason, Stella's Ruffled Fingers (Crichton, 1999) is an exception. Also, it's the first non-yellow bloom we've had this year.

floral fridays -- yellow first?

Is it just an accident of the daylilies that I've gotten? Or is there some bigger reason that the first blooms we have are yellows?

This week we saw our first blooms. First we had Happy Returns (Apps, 1986). Now, joining the party is Sweet Seneca Kisses (K. Rood, 2003). There's also a yellow noname, and another one that'll probably bloom tomorrow. We think it's Eenie Weenie (Aden, 1976) -- hopefully we'll have a better idea once it blooms. Now, we have lots of cultivars in lots of different colors. Reds. Oranges. Purples. And that includes a lot of bi-colors and multicolors.

Is there a reason the yellows come first? I can speculate that it takes less energy for a plant to make the pigments needed for a pale yellow flower than for a brighter or darker one. But that would just be me pulling explanations out of my butt. I wonder if other daylily enthusiasts see the same phenomenon?

floral fridays -- knowing the neighbors

Today, Blair found a potted plant on our front stop. No name. No note. No explanation. We have our suspicions regarding who left it, but we're not sure. We also aren't sure what it is, though I suspect it's some kind of vegetable -- zucchini?

Similarly, a couple weeks ago someone left us a plant that was labelled as a two-year lemon tree. I don't know what a "two-year" lemon tree is; maybe that means it's two years old? Whatever. I think Blair said she figured out that it came from "the compost guy." We have to figure out where to plant it. And where to plant the (suspected) zucchini, while we're at it.

This is an interesting and encouraging development.

One nice thing about doing our own gardening is that we meet and interact with our neighbors in a way that we otherwise wouldn't. Almost everyone around here hires professional gardeners. We don't. So our yard is a bit on the ragged side. It's not fully weeded, there are areas that could use mulch, and it typically goes too long between mowings. But people see us out there, and I have been told that some know us as the weird gardening people*.

But people stop and talk with us. Our next door neighbor came by one day this week and asked us about all the label markers -- the ones that identify daylilies. His family was wondering if the were locating the graves of pets? And we got into a conversation about daylilies and life. There are some other neighbors a few doors down who stop and chat as they finish their daily walk. These are people I've known since I was a teenager -- I used to babysit their kids. And it's nice to connect. A mother comes by with her kids who pepper Blair with questions -- about the flowers, the mulch, the markers, how to plant, weed, water. She tells them that if they want she'll dig up flowers that they can take home and plant.

And this is a big part of what it means to be in a community.

But back to the mystery plants that show up...I think they're thank yous.

This season, Blair has given away lots of flowers. Daffodils spread very fast. Irises and daylilies also spread. And we've found places where flowers are spreading more than we want and encroaching on other flowers. Instead of digging up excess and throwing them away, Blair has offered them to neighbors -- some of whom gladly accept. She has seen freecycle ads from people requesting sun-loving flowers, and gone out to dig things up. I could go on, but these examples put it well.

Building bonds one bulb at a time...

*We're also known for being the house with the swing, so we have that going for us, which is nice.

floral fridays -- a new daylily bed (with unboxing video!)

Two activities came together in one of those great synchronicities that usually only involve collisions of peanut butter and chocolate.

• The new flowerbed: Blair and I dug a bed out of the front yard. For background, Blair hates lawns. I don't hate them, except for the whole mowing part -- but I have a teenage son for that. But I don't have any burning need for an expanse of pristine grass. So we have gradually been expanding flowerbeds and whittling away at the grass in front of our house. We also bought a bunch of clover seed to spread around in the hope that clover gradually replaces the grass. Anyway, Blair suggested that we dig a new flower bed in the front yard, and the closest I could come to an argument against it was laziness. So we dug. I have included, near the bottom of this post, a few pictures showing the progress of the flowerbed (from our first starting to dig it out through its fully-planted state).
• The new daylilies: With the ongoing pandemic all the daylily gatherings -- LIDS meetings, Regionals, Can-Am, the National -- have been cancelled this year. So have the various sales at which we often buy daylilies from other LIDS members. So Blair suggested that we buy some flowers online. So we ordered a bunch of cultivars from Gary Jones, a Connecticut hybridizer and Vice President of the Connecticut Daylily Society.

The two decisions were unconnected -- or at least I thought they were -- but somehow we ended up deciding to devote the new flowerbed to the new daylilies. And, as luck would have it, the fifteen new daylilies seemed to be the perfect amount for the space.

The postal service took its sweet time getting the flowers to me -- they arrived half a week later than the "expected delivery date" their system printed on the mailing label. Fortunately, Gary wrapped the flowers well, and packed the box well, and we expect all the plants to survive. It'll be a few years before this flower bed hits its full glory, but we're looking forward to it.

Anyway, we totally geeked out and made an unboxing video when we got the plants. This was literally five minutes after they came through the USPS. Thanks to Sharon for taking the video and showing me the rudimentary editing skills I used to enhance it.

In case anyone cares, in the above video, I mentioned that I once posted about the worst Monkees song ever ("Shorty Blackwell"). That post is here.

Before I list the cultivars we bought, let me (as promised) share a few pictures of the flower bed:

And these are the 15 cultivars we got from Gary:

• Along for the Ride (G. Jones, 2017)
• August Frost (Trimmer, 1995)
• Bama Bound (Webster, 1986)
• Blueberry Breakfast (Rose, 1988)
• Chance Encounter (Stamile, 1994)
• Connecticut Candy (G. Jones, 2015)
• Eager Beaver (Apps, 2002)
• Grape Escape (C. Hanson, 2006)
• Little Miss Fish Breath (G. Jones, 2014)
• Mad Max (Wilson-Schott, 1989)
• Orange Heat (G. Jones, 2017)
• Peach Candy (Stamile, 1992)
• Pince Nez (M. Mason, 2000)
• Vatican City (Moldovan, 1996)
• Wisconsin Royalty (Klehm-Wisconsin Daylily Society, 2019)

floral fridays -- things are starting

There's not a whole lot blooming right now -- some remnants of the creeping phlox that looked so lush and colorful so recently and a few scattered columbine. But things are starting to develop.

For the first time this season we noticed scapes on a daylily. It's one of the nn-names in the front yard. Kind of makes me wish I had started labeling clumps from the beginning. But if that's my biggest regret in life, then I'm pretty lucky.* As to other plants, we have three big hibiscuses. We bought two -- a Copper King and a big red one of unknown cultivar. I guess they got a room, since the third hibiscus looks like a cross between the other two. Anyway, I looked closely today and saw the beginnings of this year's plants coming up. So, hopefully by July or August we'll have some big flowers on them.

It's going to be a busy weekend, as we created a flower bed this week, and we've ordered some daylilies which we expect to come tomorrow. Regarding that, it's always interesting when an email contains the line, "and then I had an accident with the shovel."

 *For the record, my biggest regret is that lost weekend in Cincinnati with the ambidextrous theater major and the bathtub full of orange juice.

floral fridays -- soon the iris

Quick post here. Not a whole lot new blooming except the creeping phlox (the white ones are in bloom), but I've commented on phlox a whole bunch. What has me going now is that we have irises getting ready to bloom. Maybe next week?

floral fridays -- from around the hood

Today, instead of pictures from my yard, I'm going with some pictures I took around the neighborhood in the last week or so. Well, in fact, one of them is from my yard.

A neighbor has a really nice display of bushes in her front yard. Azaleas, hostas, conifers. There's also some creeping phlox and pachysandra which aren't visible in the picture.

I thought it was really cool the way this oak tree has sedum growing all around its roots.

I love azaleas when they're in bloom. Sadly, they don't stay in bloom very long. Happily, this seems to be a relatively cool spring, and that makes them last longer. Each flower is small, but they cover the outside of the bush in a carpet of color. This is a closeup of an azalea flower after the rain.

A weed is just a plant growing where it's not wanted. To a lot of people dandelions are weeds, because they don;t want them in their lawns. I kind of like yellow spots that a well-dandelioned yard has.

floral fridays -- our little flowerbed with the walkways

Working from home, I sit with a window at about 2:00. Which means that, turning my head a little to the right I can see outside. Within my range of vision is a corner of our front yard. This corner is a part that used to have grass. Actually, it had pachysandra when we moved in twenty years ago, but I hate pachysandra, so we pulled it all out and replaced it with grass. But, as Blair and I have gotten more into gardening, we've been slowly replacing grass with flowerbeds. In this particular flowerbed we have a bunch of label markers for daylilies. And there are a couple flagstone walkways into the flowerbed.

One interesting thing about spending hours here is that I see the occasional person walk by. There are more passersby when we're not in the midst of a pandemic, but even in this situation we have there are a bunch of people -- some of whom I recognize, and some of whom I don't -- who come by. I always get a bit of secret pleasure when I see people stop to look at the garden. It's ragged right now, since it's early in the year. Truthfully, it's always ragged because Blair and I aren't good at weeding and trimming. But this early in the season we don't even have the beautiful daylily blooms to offset the ragged look. So the marker stakes stand as sentinels, seeming to identify nothing but the greenery.

At any rate, sometimes these people stop to look at the flowerbed. Sometimes they even take pictures, though I'm not sure why. But what really tickles me is when I see them walk into the flowerbed along the slate path. I'm not sure what they're getting out of it when there's nothing in bloom, but I really enjoy seeing people enjoying the walkways.

And I can't wait until I have blooms to see how people react then.

floral fridays -- creeping phlox and grape hyacinth (with daylily fans)

It's mid-April. The crocuses are done. The daffodils are fading. The irises and daylilies aren't ready to bloom yet, but both are giving us some nice foliage so we're optimistic.

For now, we have some grape hyacinth and creeping phlox. The former is a bit past its peak and the latter is approaching its peak.

When I was a kid I loved hyacinths. There was something about that big bulb of little blooms that attracted me. Now I'm not so enamored of them (though I can still appreciate them). But the grape hyacinths are really cool, especially if you plant them with something else to act as a complement.

floral friday - creeping phlox

To a lot of people, creeping phlox isn't particularly impressive. It's a low-lying ground cover that spends most of the season in its post-bloom green stage.

But I like it. When it's in bloom, there's something really special about the sight of the blues, pinks, whites and purples. And it's great for preventing soil erosion on hills. I especially like the way we have places in our yard where it kind of pillows out between rocks. In one particular spot (not pictured here) it encroaches on the sidewalk, reminding me of slow flowing lava.