Sylvus' Garden---Daylily

Daylilies

var. Hyperion

Or, Flowers intertwined with the House's History

Though the house came with a clump of hyperion daylilies when I moved in, I didn't discover them until I started clearing the weeds and alley trees a few years ago; and they were so thickly clumped they didn't bloom---in fact, I didn't realize what they were until I put some other daylilies in and realized, after a year or two that these plants had the same leaves. I tried dividing them. I had enough from the clump at the southwest corner of the house to plant around the clothesline pole, make a generous southside bed, with plenty left for the original location.

They rewarded me with no flowers. So then I waited for them to recover from the division. After two years, finally flowers, and now they're performing well, especially since I started spraying them from the beginning of the season with a proprietary soap spray (Safer) to control the thrips which have been my only real problem with daylilies. Though they bloom after the other daylilies, they provide a lot of the garden's drama until the later perennials and annuals get going.

A Cliched Flower Photo

I use an old Canon T-70 to take most of my pictures. It came with a telephoto lens, which is okay. But my true love is my Vivitar macro zoom lens, which I purchased to shoot [scrimshaw]. However, sometimes I just can't get it quite far enough away...generally I use fujicolor iso 100, though I was also experimenting with Konica that summer. I've given up trying to get really good, consistant print processing, though Kodalux probably returns the best color.

I use a very nice Bogen 3033 tripod (courtesy of my brother), necessary because I tend to take garden pictures early in the morning, using available light. There are few people around, and I like that golden cast, but the low light levels combined with the fine grained film, even with the large apetures, means slow speeds. For shots to low to the ground to use the tripod successfully, I cut a comical figure propping the camera on sticks, my kids' toy wheelbarrow, against rocks, etc etc...

Links to other garden photographs.