Sunday Stroll

I don't consider myself much of a daylily person. It's not that I dislike them--I definitely do like them--but I admit to preferring other types of lilies.

Like this Stargazer in our dining room.



But I've never had a garden without daylilies, because I sort of assumed it was illegal not to grow them if you had space enough. I always did and do.

When I was putting in the gardens at the Lodge, some 14 years ago, I made a lot of purchases at a perennial farm. Everything is grown in the ground and there are giant photograph albums showing the plants in bloom. And I'd point at a picture and say "I'll have some of that, please!" and at another. And when my order was complete, a gardener would head out into the plots with a huge garden fork and fork up root balls and wrap them in newspaper and off I'd go to transplant them in my own beds.

That's how I acquired my daylilies. After studying the entire photo album featuring just daylilies, I was very choosy, taking only two sorts.

This burnt orange one:



And this one:



I did not choose this one. It chose me.



I didn't know I had it until after I transplanted the pinky-purple one from the fence, where it was overwhelmed by spreading rugosas, to the long perennial border. Evidently embedded in its tubers was a remnant of a tuber from the yellow-orange one above, and once it surfaced it came into its own.

After all the fierce, pounding rainstorms of late--4 inches in 36 hours--it's nice to have flowering plants that are so impervious. Therefore I find that in daylily season, temporarily at least, I am a daylily person.

My stroll took place yesterday, but I'm posting it today, thus it becomes a Sunday Stroll. Happy strolls to you, and to see more, go here.

As for the roses, the showers will ensure a good flush of flowers from the re-bloomers, but right now there's not much going on. Things are budding up, but only the rugosas have blossoms, and not many at that.

One of the few open flowers, a white rugosa, attracted a horde of monsters. Disgusting sight, isn't it? My first Japanese beetle encounter of the summer.



It was their last meal. I was their merciless executioner.

The NWS has determined that it was a single tornado that terrorised NH at midday Thursday, rather than a storm that spawned multiple tornadoes. The total of affected towns has expanded to eleven.

Another wild weather extravaganza is expected later today, which will doubtless have an adverse impact on the clean-up. The past two days of perfect sunshine were a gift.