Sunshine, Lilies, and Beetles

ProfessorRoush has been waiting breathlessly for these 'Kaveri' lily buds to open, desperately afraid that a strong wind or the neighbor's dog would take them down prior to their display.  They seem to have self-seeded or spread over about a 10 foot area and they're all strong and healthy.  Not bad for a free gift from a gardening company!

And other lilies are holding sway right now, the taller accompaniment to the daylilies which are coming in.  To the left, Orientpet 'Purple Prince' holds a proud place as the protector of a 'Beautiful Edging' daylily on my front walk.

Nearby, this group of 'Yellow Dream' and 'Purple Prince' (below)  will brighten up the area in front of the garage for the next two weeks. You know from my previous posts how much I wait for and love 'Yellow Dream'.   Downwind from this group is always a sweet fragrance treat that I have to stop each time and admire.  'Purple Prince', himself, is maybe not so pretty (at right), but he's a strong and stalwart fellow in the garden.

And then, somewhere in the back garden, this first of Asiatic's paints it's blood-red way among my viburnums.   I always see this lily first, only to watch it fade as the rest come on.

Last but not least, this is obviously not on a lily, Orientpet or Asiatic, but I always try to mark the first arrival of Japanese beetles in this blog so that I can keep track of them.  And here one is, first found on June 28, 2021, on top of  'Fru Dagmar Hastrop', frass sprinkled among the petals.  Thankfully, the disgusting creatures prefer this rose and 'Blanc Double de Coubert' and leave the others alone.  The spray I'm using doesn't seem to make any difference, sadly.  I'm just hand-picking and gleefully smashing under my heels.  Quite a sad comment on the activity of an otherwise peaceful gardener.

I See You!

See, this is why ProfessorRoush can't have a nice, simple garden filled with perfect plants and idyllic moments.   Aside from minor problems like runaway fire, punishing winds, late snows, early freezes, deep winter cold, and searing summer sun, it is things like these that try my soul.  Do you see it?   Click on the picture to enlarge it and look again!

At roughly 6:45 a.m. this morning, after the lovely Bella had been outside, explored the premises, and "watered" the yard, and after I had eaten my morning cereal, I looked out the back window to assess the morning and saw this lovely rabbit still-frozen among the daylilies.  It must have seen me step up to the window because it didn't move in the minute it took me to retrieve my phone and compose the shot, nor did it move until after I stepped away.  Well, presumably it moved after I stepped away.  Maybe it's still sitting there for all I know.

This is probably the same lagomorph, or a member of a tribe of furry-pawed thumpers, that eat the first daylilies that come up each year, nipping anything green to the ground until the shear mass of spring foliage overwhelms their gluttony and stomach capacities.  And likely the same creature that nipped off the first sprouts of my beloved 'Yellow Dream' Orienpet lilies in front last week.  Nothing, it seems, is sacred from these monsters, except perhaps the sprouting peonies.  I don't know what it is about peonies, but the fauna in my garden, deer, rabbits and mice all, leave the peonies alone.  I would be grateful, but the invading horde probably is executing a demoralization campaign, allowing my hopes to raise and then be inevitably crushed by a late-May storm that flattens the peonies and my dreams in a single night.  Do other gardeners believe the native fauna and climate are both conspiring against them, or is it just paranoid little-old-me? 

I would arm myself with a suitably-scoped assault device or perhaps a Sherman tank and take these out, but speaking of weather collusion, there are bigger battles and disappointments on my horizon.  Currently, my lilacs and redbuds are blooming at full glory and beauty and the forecast two days away is for a low of 27ºF and snow.   

Sigh.


 

My (Orien)pets

Oriental 'Montana'

Calling my Orienpet lilies "my pets" is almost as bad as labeling them "my precious," isn't it?  I'm trying not to think of myself as the decrepit Sméagol/Gollum in Lord of the Rings as I say it, but I'm sure I have the rasping inflection and covetous smiling expressions down all the same.  They are just so beautiful and fragrant that they overload my senses.

After my experience with 'Yellow Dream' (picture below) a few years back, I had resolved to buy more Oriental Lilies and Orienpets and you can see the result here.  Oriental lily 'Montana', pictured above, is the most fabulous of the new Orientals I planted, just to the left of my front door, pouring out fragrance for 5 yards around.  Don't you just love her freckles?

Orienpet 'Yellow Dream'

Although some of the new lilies have struggled, others are flourishing and expanding, particularly the Orienpets.  Now if only I could get the Kansas winds to stop throwing them onto the ground, I'd be in semi-heaven for a few weeks.  I prop some of them up with stakes, but I neglect others and pay for it with a few more broken stems after every storm. 

Orienpet lilies, or OT lily hybrids, are hybrids of Oriental and Chinese Trumpet lilies, as opposed to the Oriental-Asiatic, or OA hybrids, like 'Kaveri' that I pictured recently.  Orienpets inherited the best of both their parents and are very disease-resistant and have better drought, and cold tolerance than either parent.  Most are very tall (some gardeners call them "tree lilies") and floriferous, and the only drawback of them that I've seen so far is that blooms of some of the hybrids, like 'Beverly Dreams', face downward, diminishing their impact.

Orienpet 'Beverly Dreams'

I complain about 'Beverly Dreams', but on the other side of that coin, those thick waxy petals survive the searing Kansas sun without shriveling, and indoors, that fabulous color lasts a week or more in a vase.   'Beverly Dreams', in particular, is tempting me to get my first black light since the 70's, since I suspect it would light up spectacularly in ultraviolet.

Orienpet 'Purple Prince'

'Yellow Dream' is, as always, a standout this year, but the rainy spring and early summer here have left her yellow hues more muted than previously.  I also made the mistake of intermixing her clumps with 'Purple Prince', and their colors clash a bit.  I'm not as crazy about the downward facing and slow-opening 'Purple Prince', and I may move these bulbs eventually to a less prominent spot. 

Orienpet 'Anastasia'

The most recent to open, and one of the prettiest, is 'Anastasia', the newest Orientpet in my garden; delicate-colored and beautiful, and reminscent of 'Montana', pictured above.  I must be irrationally partial to the pinks since those two are my "pick of the season" so far.  There are, however, more buds warming up in the bullpen.  And stay tuned, because I'm preparing a "best-of-show" entry of the new daylilies I'm seeing.  Wowsa!

Yellow Border

I had promised, long ago, to portray the front of my home, and in the next week or so, I'll attempt a couple of posts to do just that, starting today with my "yellow border", the northwest corner of the house, which hides the unavoidable garage behind a yellow and green progressive hodgepodge.

I didn't consciously set out to create a yellow border, I intended for a mix of yellow and sky-blue, but my timing happens to be entirely off regarding the mixing of the colors.  That, and the blue plants tend to die, while their yellow counterparts seem to keep on keeping on.  The sunny fate of this portion of the garden was sealed a few years ago with my planting of Oriental lily 'Yellow Dream' on a whim.  A few smallish bulbs,and now, two years later, I've got four clumps of enormous fragrant lilies who demand to be both seen and heard.  

Early in the spring, the light blue of Scilla and Puschkinia are visible, but they soon fade as the cheery faces of daffodils take over and the yellow begins.  Alongside and in front of the yellow-tipped Thuja orientalis ‘Sunkist’, the daylilies and lilies and Black-eyed Susans form in long succession, 'Happy Returns' and 'Stella de Oro' followed by more regal daylilies and the yellow buttons of Centaurea macrocephala.  We reach a climax of yellow upon yellow now, at the end of June, as 'Yellow Dream' oriental lilies take center stage.  I shouldn't complain, for they are beautiful, fragrant, and healthy, a triple play of floral excellent.

The occasional blue of Clematis 'Romona' blooming on the brick wall, a blue Babtista reaching stiffly skyward, and a blue Clematis integrifolia have their brief moment, but they are drowned out by the endless yellow.  Even daylily 'Beautiful Edging', pictured at the right, while not strictly yellow, fulfills the daylily curse of appearing as all yellow from a few feet away.   In the hot sun, the pink edges never appear at all, let alone long enough to notice. 

I know it's not Sissinghurst's White Garden, but it is still pretty satisfying to little unknown me.  Right now, this year, this part of the garden is my shining accidental triumph, a yellow bright spot to reflect back the Kansas sun.  If you can't beat the heat,  at least you can join it.

Almost Anonymous Lilies

Wow, talk about your mental anguish!   You see, first of all, I recently lost the thumb drive that contains the list of my 2011 plant acquisitions and my recently updated garden maps.  I was sure I had backed it up, but have been unable find the backup anywhere.  Secondly, I can recall getting a bulb order in this spring from a mail order nursery and I know it contained some Naked Ladies and some other less common bulbs, but I could not remember exactly what else I ordered.

Oriental Lily 'Yellow Dream'

And then this beauty has popped up in my front landscaping and not only was I unable to put a name to it for several days, I couldn't remember planting it this year at all.  Actually there are two of them, very tall (3 1/2 to 4 1/2 feet tall) and floriferous, with about 8-10 buds on each one, just starting to bloom. They are too yellow for Madonna Lilies. They're too late and too large to be Asiatics. They're not strongly scented as near as I can tell right now and they're much more robust than I can usually get an Oriental lily to grow here in dry Kansas.  And they're big blooms, bigger than 'Stargazer'.  And so many blooms on each stem!  Gorgeous!  It is extremely frustrating to me, though, when I can't provide the proper name for a plant (except for the umpteen zillion orange daylilies).

So I searched and I searched my notes and scraps of packages.  I searched electronically through my plant lists for "lily" and "lilium".  I found nothing.  I finally vaguely remembered that I had planted a yellow Oriental lily in my Hydrangea Bed several years back.  And there, buried in my plant maps, comes this note from 2009:  "Oriental Lilly 'Yellow Dream', 8 scattered in Hydrangea Bed and in Front Bed."  The feeling of relief I had was as welcome as a July rain storm in Kansas, even though now I'm a bit chagrined that I can't spell "lily" correctly in my notes.

I do, however, know who is really to blame for my angst.  Mrs. ProfessorRoush particularly likes lilies; it doesn't matter if they are Asiatics or Orientals or daylilies.  And so I resolved last year to plant more of the Asiatics and Orientals to extend the lily bloom period in my garden.  And what do I get for my efforts to be a good gardening husband?  Mental angst and the self-doubt which comes along with aging, the inability to remember the name of something, and the anxiety over whether Alzheimer's disease has begun to set in.

You know what they say, though, about old gardeners and Alzheimer's disease: Forgetting the name of a plant is not a symptom of Alzheimer's disease, it is finding that you planted it in your neighbor's garden instead of your own that indicates you might have a problem.