Well, we're one week and one day from our Open Garden and things are looking good. It is always hard to predict three months out which weekend will be closest to our peak bloom. Peak bloom is the day when the most number of varieties of daylilies are blooming. We have more than 350 varieties and on the day of peak bloom we have generally had around 210-225 varieties blooming. One year, 2006, we hit it within one day. This year, beacuse of the cool spring, the bloom seems to be spreading out over a longer period. Yesterday we had 163 varieties blooming; some are nearing the end of their bloom period and there are many that have yet to start. If I had to predict right now, I would say about Tuesday June 24th would be peak.
Our hybridizing is coming along nicely. Alison spends most mornings in the garden dabbing pollen on pistils, making tags of what she has crossed, and checking for pods that have set from the previous days. We have acquried several very new, cutting edge varieties (by purchase and trade) over the past three years to accelerate our hybridizing and we are blooming our first efforts from that and I hope to post a seperate blog on that in the next few days. Although I dare not speak for my wife, Alison seems to be working heavily with full formed flowers that are green edged and heavily ruffled, as well as some with patterned eyes. I like to work with reds, and those with unusual characteristics like streaks, doubles, bicolors, and highly contrasted colors. Sometimes, when Alison sees what I am hybridizing, she will howl like a coon hound. This is to signal to me her belief that what I am hybridizing will turn out to be what is refered to in the trade as a "dog." A dog is a flower that has muddy color, spotty or blotchy, bland or just plain ugly. I just respond with "You never know." I get to do very little hybridizing however since it is best done in the mid morning hours when I am at work.
This little gem, named 'Maret,' is one of eleven seedlings that we have been bringing along that, last year, several friends paid for naming rights by making a donation to our Africa Mission to Sierra Leone. For $100, interested folks got to select a flower from our seedling beds and tell us what they'd like to name it. Mr. Tom Sinemma named it after his grand daughter. I really need to post a blog for those to. My favorite name of those submitted was 'Downtown Millie.' As I recall, it is a medium red with a dark red eye and petals that curl back to a point. Another of those named seedlings is on the upper right of this page. It is a stunner that is named after the village where we go in Sierra Leone for our Mission work, 'Taiama' and is pronounced "ti-AM-uh."
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