Christmas Notebook

The daisies began blooming last week. The clumps of white add a lot to the daylily beds. These are the daisy ‘Becky.’ It’s a sturdy plant and great at staying upright. Never needs staking. It spreads quickly, so give it plenty of room or be prepared to divide it in the next few years.

The Russian sage seems to suffer this year from the lack of rain. It looks good, but is not as full and vigorous as it usually is.

The daylily ‘Red Hawk’ has long flower scapes (stalks). The blossoms hover well above the plant.

The center of the driveway is a mix of some good spots and some very weedy spots. It needs to be reworked. The northern end has a nice bed of daylilies, though.

Where the lawn gets full sun, the grass is dry, brown and brittle. Mowing sends up a cloud of dry grass and dust.

The only way to know if I had mowed parts of the lawn was to look for the flower stalks of the English plantain. Just look at how brittle and dry that grass is. Thankfully, those parts of the yard that get more shade are still green and growing, if slowly.

As a general rule, the only watering we do is when putting in new plants to get them well established. We do not water the lawn or the flower beds. Mulching and mature plants that are crowded together help preserve the moisture. But we are way behind on rain this summer and the sun-soaked parts of the garden are suffering.

The tiger lilies opened this week. Even though orange is my least favorite color, this is such a pretty flower. Do you see the tiny inch worm standing on his hind legs?

Some of the hostas that are in a lot of sun are beginning to burn a bit. But most get enough shade that, even is the dry conditions, they still look great. Many are flowering right now.

Hosta ‘Gold Standard’ and “Lemon Lime’ and ‘Pizzazz’

Hosta ‘Daybreak’ and ‘Candy Hearts’

A quick tour of the front yard today, but I hope you enjoyed it.

~~Rhonda

The daylilies are at peak right now. Everything looks beautiful. We are grateful for the rain the garden received on Monday. It made a huge difference in the size and vigor of the flowers. And the grass looks better, too. It was beginning to brown and looked ragged. I don’t know how many inches of rain we are behind the normal average, but we do need more, I can tell that.

The rain came at a good time for the daylilies, though. They were beautiful when I went out yesterday to take some pictures.

‘Dragon King’

‘Mokan Butterfly’

‘African Mahogany’

‘Tuscawilla Tigress’

‘Kindly Light’

‘Green Flutter’

‘Monterrey Jack’

‘Shadyside’

‘Frances Watkins’

I hope you enjoyed the garden walk. I could go on and on…but I’ll stop here and share more next time.

~~Rhonda

It’s early summer and the daylilies are blooming, with more opening every day. We have about 400 daylily cultivars in the garden, so it’s exciting to see what has opened in the past 24 hours. But that’s not all that’s going on out there.

The hostas are beginning to bloom. You can see the lavender blooms of ‘Blue Cadet’ to the right of the birdbath in this picture.

In the front yard, these hostas are under the shade of a redbud tree, with a daylily bed extending into the sun.

‘Squash Casserole’ is sending up its first flower scapes.

The ‘Royal Standard’ hosta will send up its pure white flowers later in the season. Right now, we enjoy the hydrangeas that back them at the front porch.

I don’t know the name of these white lilies, but they look just as beautiful without a name as they would with one.

The same thing holds true for the pink ones. These are wonderful in a vase, lasting for a few weeks as new buds open at the top.

Of course, the daylilies are the star attraction this time of year.

‘Spider Man’…a beautiful red one.

Did I mention the raspberries are ripe? 🙂

You can visit other gardens at Jean’s Bloomin’ Tuesday.

~~Rhonda