Daylilies, or It's not me, it's you

Have you ever been in a relationship that went much further than you meant for it to go, and at some point you were wondering how it got there? I confess that this describes my relationship with daylilies. I mean, I liked daylilies, but I never went out of my way to buy any, until I caught the daylily bug from littlewing. She had many beautiful daylilies and I begin to see the appeal of spiders and some of the other forms. Before that all I had were the single and double orange daylilies, a pale lilac-pink ordered from Wayside when we lived in Pennsylvania, and a grab bag of daylilies from Lowe's. Ironically latter two were purchased 16+ years ago by DH, who doesn't do much at all in the flower gardens. He's too busy with work and heavy farm projects. Plus, he just doesn't want to do it. lol I don't even remember when the single orange daylilies came from. The doubles I picked up near a pond in my parents' neighborhood where they had been discarded, or set free.

Then I started to buy a few daylilies,

'Ah Youth'

'Meriam White'

and acquired others through trade.

'Lion in Winter'

Lovely yellow noid from a gardener in Greensboro

'Lemon Berry Frost'

'Bleu Celeste'

I even grew some from seed acquired through trade.

'Strawberry Candy x 'Larger Than Life'

'Mokan Butterfly' x 'Mask of Eternity'

'Avante Garde' x 'Maxfield Parrish'

Then I started to divide those, and bought a few more.

'Lavender Deal'

'Lavender Stardust'

I never spent that much on daylilies, because I always bought cheap ones. I went crazy dividing them though. Too crazy, and ended up with a small sea of strappy foliage in the off season.

I also bought some daylilies that now I am not too crazy about, and unfortunately have divided and put all over the garden. The chief ones are 'My Melinda', 'Smuggler's Gold' and some other undistinguished yellows. I have decided that everyone single daylily that I do not just love must come out. Why so draconian? The deer are now unimpressed by my peppermint extract spray, and remained unimpressed even when I added hot sauce -- a LOT of hot sauce. It seems completely insane to spend 45 minutes to 1 hour every night spraying the daylilies anyway.

'My Melinda' is a tall daylily with many-branched scapes and warm, almost coral pink flowers. It's nice enough, but the pink is too warm for my taste and I notice the stalks about as much as the flowers. Spending a lot of time spraying daylilies will make a gardener REAL picky.

'My Melinda' and 'Shady Lady'

'Shady Lady', 'Smuggler's Gold', and 'My Melinda'.

'Ruby Spider' and 'Bleu Celeste' in the foreground, with 'Ah Youth',
'Smuggler's Gold', 'My Melinda', and another 'Ruby Spider' in the background.

There are many daylilies that I love however, 'Ruby Spider', 'Blue Celeste' and 'Ah Youth' among them. 'Chocolate Splash' is one of my favorites, a rich deep chocolately burgundy that looks like brushed velvet. It doesn't really go with the rest of my garden, so I put it and some of my other warmly colored daylilies in a patch by themselves next to a 'Potter's Purple' butterfly bush. Then the deer completely eliminated my color clashing problem by eating all of those daylilies no matter what I tried.

'Sparkling Orange' and 'Chocolate Splash'

In desperation I ordered a motion detection sprinkler to protect the daylilies planted to the east of the house. It's very sensitive at its highest setting and seemed to do the trick, although of course the deer have to be detected BEFORE they start eating the daylilies. So I bought a second one. That should cover the garden east of the house but the rest of the daylilies are probably deer fodder. The sprinkler pulled second duty keeping the deer away from the okra after daylily season. It also zapped a raccoon that was trying to make off with a container of Amdro.

Why do I think the culprit was a raccoon? Opossums aren't that industrious and I hadn't heard any coyotes lately. However, I had recently seen raccoons.

I was down by the old house site spreading compost when I heard a high trilling, rather like an incomplete spring peeper chorus. I started looking around and low and behold there were about there were two raccoons about the third of the way up a pine tree having what appeared to be a tussle. One was trying to bite the leg of the one higher up. I was talking to myself, saying "oh look, raccoons, etc" and "I hope since it's daylight they're not rabid". They hadn't been paying me the slightest attention until the word "rabid" and then both their heads whipped around and they looked at me. They kept a close eye on me after that, switching from side to side in the tree so that they could see me, one stacked right on top of the other. It quickly became apparent that they were littermates, about 2/3rds grown, playing in the tree. There was at least one other youngster in another tree too. And I spied the mama raccoon deeper in the woods, about 50 feet away, staring at me. She actually was a little creepy. lol

A couple of days after that, during the weekend, I saw one of the young raccoons literally high-tailing it down the driveway and jump into the adjacent ditch when it saw DH coming down the driveway with the wheelbarrow. Now I know who used to fling my newly divided iris rhizomes around searching for grubs and earthworms when I saw similar digging patterns around the gardens near the house shortly after seeing these raccoons.

I love all of the daylilies pictured below, with 'Indian Giver' being my very very favorite. It's a slow grower and stingy with its blooms but the flowers are out of this world beautiful.

'Ah Youth'

'Ruby Spider' and 'Bleu Celeste'

'Bleu Celeste'

'Shady Lady'

'Jedi Blue Note'

'Catherine Neal'

'Tar and Feather'

'Desert Master'

'Night Beacon'

'Beautiful Edgings'

'Indian Giver'

So, I can still see the appeal of daylilies. But I need more out of this relationship than chomped stalks. If the motion detection sprinklers aren't good enough, it's over. Still, I was happy to have daylilies in my garden, even if it's not forever.