As I mentioned yesterday the nucleus of my daylily collection came from a fellow beadmaker who was a passionate gardener with an acre who specialized in daylilies: she liked the spiders, but not the ones with eyes, and as this was nearly 20 years ago, I think the super ruffled ones weren't as common. I especially loved the deep red daylilies, when mixed with red monarda.

Here above you see the red portions of my haul freshly planted way back in 2002. (Or possibly replanted...)^[1] But even here there are hints of trouble in paradise: (leaving aside the views from the side) the wide-petalled orangey red in the lower right has been lost to time; the one in the middle, only partially open, looks good; but the two on upper left, while they have good colour in the 3 ‘fore’ petals, the smaller back petals are not so vivid.

Unfortunately for me, the less vivid ones, not surprisingly, propagate much more readily, putting their energy into reproductive success instead of vivid colour.

Flash forward nearly 20 years: daylilies planted with red and scarlet monarda.

So, over time, the more I seemed to divide and assiduously spread them throughout my garden, the more the colour seemed to fade. I tried watering them more, even fertilizing. It helped a little, but I still wasn't seeing the brilliant colour I vaguely remembered. Sometime around 2018, I realized it wasn't my imagination that the daylilies had once upon a time been just as vivid as the red bee balm with which I paired them.

Gardening, like yoga and drawing, was an activity f2tE initially tried, discarded, and as ze settled into adulthood, returned; but living in a rental, free plants were to be preferred. Frustrated with lack of colour, I donated the bulk of the unsatisfying red ones last fall, where they made a handsome edging for the compost pile this summer.

But what about my true, deeply coloured ones...? Well, that's for next time.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.

Sylvus Tarn