Day-lilies, that is. You know, Mom never cared for them, so I never really considered them as an option for my yard. But I had some bare spots that needed filling with something, and I was drawing a blank. Then some the previous owners had planted bloomed, and I thought they looked pretty nice. So I turned to my favorite resource, GreyTalk, and asked the members there.
Now, you may think it's crazy to take a gardening question to a message board dedicated totalking about retired greyhounds as pets, but greyhound adoption cuts across all socio-economic lines, from what I can see. We have folks on that board who are rocket scientists, some who are botanists, and some who wait tables and tend bar. And LOTS of them are gardeners. So I started a post over there about day-lilies, and the majority of the answers were positive. I especially liked the aspect of them being almost impossible to kill, so I figured I'd try a few. That was ... Memorial Day weekend, I think, and Lowes had marked theirs down to half-price, so I brought home a half-dozen or so to play with.
I'll have to add photos later, because apparently they're on my home PC, not my laptop, but I started with a small rectangular section on one side of the driveway. I created a border of day-lilies along the property line side of the section. When they bloomed, I really liked how they looked, so when I was at Lowes a couple weeks later, I bought a few more and expanded that section slightly.
As far as I knew, I was done with planting then, until next fall at the earliest.
Yeah, right.
Father's Day weekend, a neighbor shared with me a mess of heirloom tomato plants that were given to her by a relative. While I gave some of them away, I also wanted to plant some, so I created a tomato bed in a section of the front yard that's almost side yard. To do that meant another trip to Lowes (aka my favorite toy store) for soil amendments to make the red Georgia clay a little more friendly for the 'maters.
As I was loading up my car after one trip, a car pulled into the parking space next to mine. As the lady emerged from the driver's seat, I gestured and said "Welcome to my favorite toy store." She then asked me if I was a gardener, to which I replied that I pretend to be, or am trying to be, or something like that. When I said that, she asked me if I wanted any lilies. My affirmative reply netted me her business card - she said she was in the process of dividing the lilies in her yard, and I could have as many as I wanted.
Turns out, she lives about 15 minutes from my house (without traffic), and I've now made two trips to her house, helping her dig out the lilies she needs to divide, and carrying home the divisions. We're not done, but I was starting to develop tendonitis from all the digging I was doing in June, and the last batch is in full bloom, so we need to wait until they're done blooming to get them.
So I've been having lily-fest at my house, finding areas to fit them in. She's giving me all colors and sizes, including some Stella D'Oro (which I'll also be getting from the neighbor who gave me the tomato plants, when they divide theirs this fall).
I watch them as they bloom for a day, showing all their glory to any passers-by, thriving in conditions that have killed other plants, and what constantly comes to mind is "Consider the lilies of the field - they neither toil nor spin, but I tell you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like these."
That verse never meant much to me, when all I knew about lilies were the Tiger-lilies my Mom fought every year in the yard of my childhood home. It has a whole new meaning for me now.
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