Lily ID # 3

The last lily in my garden has bloomed!

In the shade, the yellow in these lilies becomes much lighter. The fragrance is distinctly different than the other lilies, and frankly, this one is absolutely my favorite! I think it is named "Gold Band".

Lily ID # 2.5

I think I misidentified the last lily. I didn't realize I had two different dark pink lilies until I cut several and brought them into the house together. Then I got to looking more closely, and I realized one was a stargazer, and one was not.

The one on the left is the Stargazer, while the one on the right is currently unknown... Perhaps it is "Black Tie"? Any ideas?

New Daylily

So, my neighbor has a clump of day lilies growing at the fence corner, and it has spread through the fence. Dad cuts the emerging bulbs down with the weed eater, but this week he left them standing so I headed out with a shovel and collected two for myself!

I've no idea what the name of the day lily is, but it's got three layers of petals and a very lovely dark orange stripe on a lighter orange flower.

With this addition, I now have four varieties of day lilies.

I've been reading a lot about hybridizing your own day lilies by cross pollinating the ones you have in your yard and collecting the seeds.

Once my lilies get situated and a year or two more growth on them, I think I may give it a try!

I now have a good selection of size, shape, and bloom times.

Any idea what this orange one is named?

Lily ID # 2

The second lily to bloom in my garden was the Stargazer!

The flowers are much smaller than the Corsos, at perhaps 6 inches. But they smell much stronger, and the color is vivid.

I've got 4 Corsos and now 3 Stargazers; of my 12 pack, two aren't blooming this year and 7 are identified. That leaves three more lilies. I'm disappointed that the variety pack ultimately seems to have so little variety, but you get what you pay for. Maybe I can add some more specimens later. I particularly want a white and  a white/yellow lily.

Lily Type #1 - ID: Corso

The first lily has bloomed!

Date: 6/18/2013
Size: 8.5-9 inches wide
Name: Believed to be Corso; inner petals have raised, dark pink/red spots and are smooth edged; outer petals are ruffled. Light pink petals with yellow centers and a green throat.

The Mystery Lily Blooms

So at last, at last. The mystery lily has bloomed, and it's very pretty! Mom had the idea to use a stick from the yard to hold up the stem, since it was leaning pretty far over. And just in time - it bloomed the day after she staked it up. No fragrance, unfortunately, but very lovely and a wonderful surprise that morning - 5/28/13

That Purple Thing, II

So, I wrote about the Purple Thing a while back, here. I speculated that what I had on my hands was an Aster. However... I think I need to reevaluate my diagnosis.

After stumbling across a link, here, the phrase, "It's an osteo that doesn't close; its double blooms stay open all day and night.." really stuck out to me. I was never totally satisfied with labeling the purple thing as an Aster, as the bloom times were all off and the link didn't mention anything about the flowers closing like they do. 

So. There we go. I think I have an African Trailing Daisy, which is surprising because it's out of its hardiness zone. It only blooms in winter for me, but what a show! 

Link Spotlight and That Purple Thing

Wanted to share two things which are actually one thing just two ways.

I subscribe to a fun newsletter called "Now I Know," and this morning's article was on an intriguing plant called the Burning Bush. This perennial herb can be set afire! Well. Sorta. Check out the link, here.

I've spent way too much time on this website; The Helpful Gardener really is just that. It's got to be one of the most concise and streamlined source of gardening how-to's, when-to's, and why-to's.

While I was browsing the site, I found a list of plants known to attract butterflies. So I start clicking through, and I stumble across the Aster. Check out the pic below!

See that? For a few long moments I thought someone had walked up into my yard and taken a picture of The Purple Thing growing in a flower box on my front porch!

Let me tell you the story. Two years ago, in 2011, mom and I picked out some daisies at the store to plant in our flower box.

2011

See the green clump at the far right? We thought those were just another sort of daisy. They were inch and a half wide bright purple flowers. Cute, right? So we planted them. The colorful daisies never made new flowers and eventually died, and that clump in front never bloomed beyond the few flowers it came with. We thought 2011's flower box was a bust. Bah!

We were lazy and didnt clean it out. And when spring of 2012 rolled around, the Purple Thing was still alive. And in late January... February... March... it was blooming! When everything else was dead, that Purple Thing was covered in flowers.

2012

This picture above is from May, 2012. And you don't see any flowers on it. That's cause it stops blooming when it gets hot! And That Purple Thing doesn't like us to take care of it either. If we water it, it tries to die. If we fertilize it, it sulks. Know how we found that out? We planted those little annuals behind it; the more we tended them, the more the Purple Thing hated us. So we stopped bothering with it, the little annuals died, and the purple thing hunched there all summer long.

So now it's spring, 2013. Look. Just look:

2013

2013

You see all that? This is March; that Purple Thing has been blooming for well over a month. And it's covered in more buds just waiting to open. The greenery is almost touching the ground in the left picture. The bees and butterflies love this thing! We don't water it, we don't feed it. Mom has decided she wants to cut it back this year since there's a lot of dead material in the center of it, so in the summer when it stops blooming, we'll do that.

So today's lucky find is that I may be growing (not growing? letting grow?) an Aster in my flower box. We're not going to plant anything with it this year, since it likes to be left alone. The main trunk of this plant is easily three inches wide. The only curious thing is that the growing instructions on the Aster's page don't match what we've been doing, hahaha. But why teach an old flower new tricks? It brightens dim, cloudy winter days with incredibly vivid purple flowers that tend to close up around 4pm and open again for the morning.

If anybody has any other thoughts on what this could be, I'd love to hear!

The Mystery Plant

So, I mentioned the mystery plant.  Last year when my folks picked up the four roses on the front of the house from a small nursery, the pot that contained the biggest rose (a Sara Van Fleet) also came with a hitchhiker - a small lilly-looking plant. The nursery lady sent it home with the folks, and we decided to pot it up. 

It grew and grew, and then it died. I completely ignored the pot all winter long. It was left under the carport where I was wintering other plants, but I didn't water it or really even think about it. 

Until I was transplanting the strawberries... 

I needed extra dirt, and since my budget is pretty limited, I tend to use recycled dirt in the lower halves of pots. And there was the mystery plant's pot sitting there with all that dirt. I started to scoop out the dirt, but when I got halfway down into the pot, I discovered these glossy roots with thick bulges. I discovered the bulb root! And it had spread through the entire pot. So I hastily recovered it and started watering it. Now I have 10 sprouts coming up.  

These pics are dated Feb 28 and March 16th, respectively. It seems to be growing quite happily! Last summer I saw a plant in the store that resembled this one. I think it makes a yellow or an orange unscented flower. We shall see.