The days are still hot and the monsoons didn’t last long . . . a couple of weeks, at best. I don’t have time to water except on weekends now. We could use the rain. I got a few shots before work today. I am exhausted . . . and it is only the second day of being back at work. My Purple Corn Dancer that is in the Southwest Garden has baby scapes . . . I will have flowers into September.
. . . For Last! Today came what I think is likely the last of the premiers of the season – Purple Corn Dancer. Honestly, one of my favorites! It is almost sad because Saratoga Springtime is cool enough, but not a favorite. Saratoga stars when my desire to see daylily blooms is the highest. Purple Corn Dancer is frequently the cultivator with the last blooms of the season. Funny, she showed up the same day Olathe Sweet Corn was shipped across the State!
All too often, I am sidetracked or just at a saturation with daylily photos. I guess it’s like how they say there are almost always more photos of the first born child.
I had 13 today and I am exhausted after my first day back to work in 5 months. I think I will just feature my Ned Roberts cultivators from today. Purple Thunderbird had a nice bloom, even at 6:45 AM.
It is interesting how daylilies look different throughout the day. Navajo Grey Hills looks like she is falling in space at 6:48 AM
Cripple Creek is an early riser and was bright-eyed for the AM photo shoot.
Desert Icicle actually looks really good first thing in the morning. She resembles Skinwalker first thing in the morning.
But, Shape Shifter is having a hard time opening her eye.
I had to wait to get Golden Eclipse until after work. Fortunately, it was a short work day (until 3:30) and some cloud cover, so she also looks decent.
Absolutely, some of my favorites still blooming. So much richer than the yellow trumpets of June. Now, to find time to savor them all.
Well, today just about wraps it up as far as premiers in my yard this year . . . other than Purple Corn Dancer all my cultivators with scapes have bloomed. 2020 brought 134 cultivators (two while I was on vaca) to my yard or a 78% bloom rate. Last year, I had 162 bloomers, a 95% bloom rate, and a rainy spring. So, 17% fewer blooms this year. Spring brought a drought and long hours of Corona Virus adaptation for work. I didn’t get the drip system fixed until mid June and I paid for it.
My next to last premier this year is Navajo Curls. I love her plump yellow petals. She has sort of an odd name for a blonde daylily. I wonder what Ned was thinking when he named her.
Enjoy the other flowers. Tomorrow, it is back to work I go.
Maybe a daylily blog is a weird place to talk about grief . . . but the daylilies are part of it. Friday the 13th of March was the day my life shifted. We put a traditional onground program online over the weekend. I had two enthusiastic brand new, full-time instructors to help me and I was super glad for years of online teaching experience.
It was weird at first . . . we thought it would end in two weeks 😉 The days were long – 15 hours. I was exhausted – But I made progress without the distractions of the office. The students got a little crazy and that was hard . . . but we got through and got the nursing students graduated in late May.
Once the warm weather came, I could eat lunch on my porch and enjoy my yard and daylilies. My pups got to be outside all day instead of cooped up in the house waiting for me to get home at 7 PM. We took evening walks and howled on the porch at 8 PM. I taught my disabled dog to use wheels and got my senior dog through two more treatments to finally clear her of infection. I got projects done around home – like painting murals and installing drip systems. Without the artificial need for an 8-6 with commute, my creativity came back. My energy got better.
Oh, there were the MA students who were in limbo with no clinical rotations who I had until the second week of July. But, I was surrounded by the other elements of my life throughout the journey. I guess I didn’t realize how much I missed them – how they fed my energy. Saturdays are not enough!
My camping trip came and went with only a few crisis – like one of my two full-time people resigning. Once I got home 3 weeks ago, I started feeling the grief. The daylilies would dwindle . . . and once school started, I would have no time for them. More than that, my life would dwindle back to a rut that is created by monotonous work in a small office with no windows and countless unforeseen issues to deal with, mostly alone. I am the only faculty with a doctorate in my institution – and 20 years teaching, 35 as a nurse – it is isolating to be so experientially separated from others. (The new college director is the second person with a doctorate.)
Tomorrow is my last day at home until mid October. Until the leaves turn my pups will be in crates by day. My daylilies will wonder where the camera went. I will become enmeshed in the endless tasks of the day and be too tired to want to walk into the house of hungry dogs at 7 PM. My dogs will become a chore in an all too busy day, again.
What is wrong with me, I think to myself? I really wanted to get away from a stay at home job because of the isolation. And, there are good things about this job. But, I am more engaged with my pups than my career at the moment. It has been a time of a lot of change for my program the past two years . . . a lot of change. And, I am responsible for way more than I want to be at this point in my life.
An online job beckons, again – and/or retirement. Maybe at the end of this school year. I am writing this blog to remind myself of this moment . . . of all the horrible and tragic things Corona Virus has brought to the world, it has brought me insight into my grief. I could step out of my rut and now I am having a hard time finding a purpose in returning.
I hope I have a new direction or at least attitude by the times the greens of the next crop of daylilies is born through the earth. Please enjoy my bloomers on my next to last day of freedom.
I will not forget the lessons of Corona. Perhaps the strangest part of all is that no one seems to see the struggle inside of me . . . . that makes the isolation 10 X worse. Thanks for letting me share with you.
No, I don’t mean a wild looking old car.
This was a camping weekend – and, like it or not, the last weekend before school starts. I had a frightening encounter with a drunk driver on the ride home. Not awful, but it coulda been.
We got home early afternoon. With temps in the 90s with high UV, my blooms were pretty weathered by the time I took pictures. I had one premier – Purple Thunderbird. That leaves only a couple of Roberts premier spiders to bloom in 2020. Purple Thunderbird is a big flower. Her scapes are short in my yard, though.
I also noticed that the weathered coloring makes Navajo Grey Hills look, well, grey. She is decidedly purple in the morning.
I ordered my first round of improved pots. I need to get soil and manure for the transfers. Might start next weekend and work around those still in bloom – a number that dwindles daily.
Colorado Kid Daylilies 