The more you chase it, the more it eludes you. Sleep is similar. The header photo is All American Chief and friend 7.8.
Busy day today with 50 new blooms. Here we go:
I need to go chase butterflies 🦋. We will see what tomorrow hatches.
The next two posts are a listing of the daylilies that have bloomed ANYTIME during July – even if they started in June. It is a large list but also a colorful one. I believe only 3 of my cultivators were totally done in June – Saratoga Springtime, Scorpio and yellow Stella de Oro.
If you like Ned Roberts cultivators, you have come to the right place because I have about 70 of them, and most (except Navajo Curls and Adios Albuquerque) that are going to bloom the year have bloomed sometime during July.
I went to the rodeo here last night, so I am all practiced-up and ready to go.
Golden Eclipse 7.16-present
July Round-up N-Z – click here for more beautiful July blooms!
Please contact my business – Art and Nature from the Hartt for sales questions/availability.
. . . and dried up all the rain. And, I ended up with over 60 cultivators, again!
Rain is a rare thing here in Western Colorado. The US average is 38 inches of rain a year, we get 11 on a good year here in Montrose. The South, where many of my bloomers came from, gets an average of 45 inches or more. Rain is a good thing – it brings the temps down, too.
Today, we will get back to the high 80s and it is sunny. We are sunny here 245 days/year. That is 40 more days than the national average. My daylilies probably wonder what planet they landed on.
Anyway – I had 3 premiers and 5 finales. The output is higher than the intake, which means we are on the downside of peak but it hasn’t really shown in our bloom count yet. It is like hospitalizations vs positive tests with COVID. It takes a while for the change to show up in both areas.
Premiers . . .
Finales . . .
Weirdly, Bella Boo, Purple Mystic, and Just Plum happy put out blooms today after I said finale. It isn’t a rebloom, it is me missing a bud.
Next week is my camping road trip. I will only be out of the garden for 4 days. Honestly, I am ready to take some scenic photos and get a little breather from the garden. Yeez, though – my hedge needs to be trimmed before I go. I can tell we got rain.
I’m back! My house is cleaner and I feel like I can pick-up the blog, again. Don’t worry, I spent my usual amount of time with my daylilies in the AM. I love getting photos of them – something to get out of bed for. After three years of a stressful job and a commute, I just had to clean because my poor home has been like a neglected garden. I needed to pull weeds and plant some new seeds.
I am going to show off my June blooms (A to Z) for June in this post. I am going to have a good bloom rate this year and it sort of scares me what peak will be like with all my plants so happy. Good thing the house is clean. I count 51 cultivators for June 2021. Last year, it was 50 in June – so close. I think I have about 180 cultivators now – almost 30% have bloomed.
Let’s close the book on June for 2021 – It’s a wrap!
Are you ready for a beautiful July parade? Here goes – a listing of all of my daylilies that had first blooms in July. I count 81. Enjoy!
Today, I had two Premiers – both Ned Roberts spiders with names from the State to south of here – New Mexico. The first one, Navajo Grey Hills, I believe to be named after a trading post just south of Shiprock, NM (Four-Corners region). I drive that way sometimes but never noticed it . . . I need to keep a lookout.
Star over Milagro is the other Premier of the day. Milagro is east of Albuquerque. Off our road trip circuit by a few miles.
Let’s see – Orange Punch was an Encore today.
Finales – Stephanie Returns, Fringe Benefit, Longlesson Show-off, Black Arrowhead, and Cheyenne Eyes. I like about 25 blooms – it is a good amount but not overwhelming. And, the monsoons have been back all week.
I spent some time today trying to re-orient myself to the new lot of daylilies that are in bloom since I got home from my road trip. I got the spent scapes cut off and tried to make a list of finales. I would like to make a list of all the ones with scapes not yet bloomed and all the ones that aren’t trying.
Anyway, I went back through the 7.8 and 7.16 photos and found more premiers. Plus, there were 5 premiers today (at least first bloom since I got home). The total is 114 that have bloomed. That’s a 67% bloom rate. To hit 80%, we will need 37 cultivators to bloom. Twenty-three more. That’s tight but we can hope. I’ll count unbloomed scapes tomorrow.
Here are the premiers from today:
And, to backtrack, here are the premiers from 7.16.20 that I finally had time to look at today. I always come home to rain – so these guys look like they just showered.
So, that is it . . . back to a normal pace except work starts Monday. However, I am suppose to have July off so I plan to work from home unless they demand otherwise. Plus, I am waiting out the two-week COVID risk.
I worked on transplanting succulent cuttings and transplanting a few succulents into larger pots. I don’t have tons of love left for my orchids . . . so I use those pots but fill the holes with moss. It takes a while but it is relaxing.
Just for the record, here is a list of all of the finales so far for 2020: Apache Uprising (I missed this one but it did bloom), Ruby Spider (today), Lime Frost, Return a Smile (unless she reblooms), Early Bird Cardinal, Prairie Wildfire, Catherine Irene, Thin Man, Comanche Princess, The Colorado Kid, Blue Beat, Mildred Mitchell, Mauna Loa, Mesa Verde, Heron’s Cove, Canyon Colors (today), Jungle Queen, Wineberry Candy, Just Plum Happy, Raspberry Propeller, Santa’s Pants, Red Mystery, Bella Boo, Nosferatwo, Coral Taco, Pink Enchalada, Pink Rain Dance, Zuni Eye (I missed this one but it did bloom), Papa Long Legs, Land of Enchantment, All American Chief, Purple Many Faces, Indian Love Call, Laughing Feather, Coyote Laughs, Kokopelli, Hopi Jewel, Mount Echo Sunrise, Holy Sombrero, Ojo De Dios, Rocky Mountain Pals, Kachina Firecracker, Kiva Dancer, Echo Canyon, Indian Giver, Funny Valentine, Wild Horses, Inwood, Primal Scream, Lacy Doily, Nurse’s Stethoscope, Canyon Colors (today), Kachina Dancer (today), Apache Bandana (today). Not bad for 6 weeks!
Route 66 is, of course, a famous highway that runs partially through the Southwest. We usually pass over it going and coming from our spring road trip to the desert. Route 66 is also the name of one of my favorite daylilies. It was the first place name daylily that I got and after that, I was hooked. My daylily names are like points on a road trip a lot of the time.
Route 66, Flagstaff, Arizona
Today, I had 66 cultivators blooming in my yard. I was thinking about Route 66 (she was in bloom and is the lead photo) and my own route to having 66 daylilies in bloom in one day. In 2015, I had 7. I now have 10X the number of daylilies. How did I get here? . . . well, I started at local nurseries. Then I tried one online site, then another. Eventually, I got attached to my Ned Roberts spiders and found a couple growers with good supplies of those. (I now have around 70 of his cultivators.) I also found the lily auction – which was fun but I get into trouble on that site. LOL.
Some of the daylilies I got in 2015/16 are having their first bloom this year. I think it takes them time to adapt to the desert – and last year, we had the exceptional drought. The year before that, I transplanted them into buried pots – so that was another adjustment. Anyway – it is cool to finally see some of these after tending them for a few years.
A couple of our Premiers today have been around that long and finally blooming. One is Navajo Grey Hills and another is Fringe Benefit. Navajo Grey Hills was a sought after Ned Roberts Southwest named daylily. Fringe Benefit, on the other hand, was a bonus plant that looks nothing like the Fringe Benefit I see online. But, oh well. I honestly had no idea what it looked like until today. I like both of them a lot!
So, without further ado, here are the Premiers (it’s not slowing down – So far, 133 blooms or about 74% bloom rate. Last year this date we were at 123 – and I have a lot more scapes left this year.):
“Fringe Benefit” bonus plant 7/23
Navajo Grey Hills 7/23
Fol da Rol 7/23
Lime Frost 7/23
Glen Eyrie 7/23
Adios Albuquerque 7/23
Bold Tiger 7/23
Colorado Kid Daylilies 