We have reached the daylily peak! Or so it seems in recent days… And that, friends and neighbors, is a sure sign of mid-summer. Seasonal climax. A gentle harbinger of autumn days to come.
Yes, the sometimes humble and other times extravagant daylily is summer’s hallmark, at least in the northeast. I have a personal weakness for the vibrant (if slightly rambunctious) daylily, so I’ve passed along several daily daylily snapshots (shout out to the ace camera team who engineered so much magic potion into my aging iPhone) over at Rosslyn Redux. Lest you missed the Technicolor parade of daylily mugs, I’m culling snapshots and a few ruminations on matters daylily (or day lily or… Hemerocallis!)
With summer in full swing, daylilies deliver a perennially entertaining floral cabaret. I suspect that it’s humanly impossible to resist their charms! (Rosslyn Redux)
It’s true. After all, who doesn’t love daylilies. Perhaps those who are allergic to their pollen (my mother-in-law, for example) are the exception that makes the rule.
If you’ve ever enjoyed the good fortune of a vast buffet, perhaps a brunch smorgasbord too vast that you couldn’t possibly try every delicacy that tempts you, then you have an inkling of the feeling I get when confronted daily with exciting new daylily blossoms… It is a sense of plenty. Of potential decadence, pleasurable even if we have the restraint to temper it. It is the allure of excess and the exotic. It is an invitation to ask, “What if?” (Rosslyn Redux)
A bit babbly, like a brook, but the gist of what I’m getting at here is abundance. Daylily blossoms promise abundance. Abundant beauty. Abundant summer. Abundant blossoms forever!
There is also an only slightly concealed magic in daylilies… They always return. Better than the year before. Year after year. For decades. Perhaps centuries… we get a glimpse at immortality in these loyal garden spirits. We are reminded to dream beyond the next freeze, to have hope beyond the next end of life. Not too shabby for a bunch of gnarled roots that even the most amateur gardener can propagate with little risk of failure! (Rosslyn Redux)
Immortality. Of a sort. A colorful, exuberant sort of floral immortality. And then there’s the familiar, run-of-the-mill daylily varities versus the exotic, mysteriously handsome varieties. I prefer… both!
I can’t resist the ever-more exotic color combinations available for hybrid lilies, but the oranges and reds and browns and yellows still win for me. Earthy. Rustic. And imbued with nostalgia for youth and meadows wandered. (Rosslyn Redux)
What about you?
Related articles
Leave a Reply