hey daylily lovers!
i've mysteriously ended up in the dips and trips aisle because my backyard garden has literally cornered me into it ... my story begins in florida where, i cringe to admit, early childhood interest in flowers was limited to popping open chinese lanterns before they were ready to bloom, zipping off fern leaves from their stalks between my fingers, and getting a sniffing high while hidden in gardenia bushes during hide-n-seek games.
i've spent the rest of my life trying to redeem my gardening soul from those early transgressions.
as a teen i left the lushness of the south and had to dive under frozen, crystalline blankets of snow in the midwest. it was there that i learned to disdain the common orange daylilies planted at every mailbox and, yes, in every ditch. living in japan for a year did nothing to cure me, either - even that did not open my eyes to daylilies progressing beyond what otherwise was a beautiful plant form. instead, i turned to flowers that would survive in a windowless office during one of my stints recruiting students to interdisciplinary phd programs and was deeply-smitten when a simple fuchsia plant audaciously began blooming under only ceiling-mounted incandescent lights!
more recently, i gave up the midwest, grabbed my italian greyhound, and moved out to northern california to be with my now-husband, and one of his many gifts was to task me with rehabbing a wonderful back yard that, when we started, consisted entirely of dirt and only dirt! i've spent four years putting in a lawn and learning (the hard and expensive way) that not all plants sold at local big-box stores will actually survive the locale ... and that very few fuchsias can find enough hiding space to tough out the intense sun that shines out here. time after time, the vast majority of plants i put into the garden perished before i could properly get to know them! it may not have helped that the ground had been desert-ed for many years before i plopped them in that first year, but at least the loss taught me to slow down, learn as much as i could bear before purchasing/planting, and to take great comfort in those flowers that withstood all they'd had to contend with. sadly, not enough to really fill the garden!
it had been something of a battleground, between me and the garden, so i finally surrendered and began searching for what IT wanted, what IT could handle - drought loving (oh, hubby is a marine biology scientist behind who's back i must smuggle drops of precious H2Oh! during water rationing in the desert-summer-climate), cold hardy (no, i'm not into wrapping my yard in burlaps for feezing-or-below winters), dog friendly (omg, out goes that sega palm, and so many others!), flowering perennials ('cause we too old and budget-challenged for the intensity of annuals). but what did that leave me?
thank goodness the long search seems to be over: the daylily was able to withstand our extreme pruning down of options over the years, and the greatest secret for us was that they had been hybridizing quietly behind the scenes into tremendous great beauties for many decades. so well worth all the 'fails' along the way to finally find a perfect fit for the garden, and us ... and so very glad to make their, and
Your, acquaintance!
from
... to ...
... with a stop at ...
... and finally ...
~Jan
... to ... 
... with a stop at ... 
... and finally ... 
Lots of great enablers here, so hold onto your wallet 
~Jan
