Tacos, Firebirds, and Skinwalkers: Come see what is new in my drought ridden daylily garden!

July 19, 2025July 19, 2025Leave a comment

Droughts, Wildfires, and Daylilies

Droughts and wildfires go together, daylilies not so much. The smoke has cleared (mostly) from the Black Canyon of the Gunnison South Rim Fire (<10 miles away), and they have the fire 15% contained. My last blog post talks more about the fire. Some rain has fallen on my garden since the last post, too. The drought continues, though. Keep reading to enjoy my daylilies from the past week!

Monitoring and Maintaining My Resilient Daylilies

I am surprised my daylilies have done as well as they have this year with the heat and drought. I have somewhere around 190 cultivators. I badly need to do inventory, maps, and labels this year. I love the Flower daylily software, but I struggle to keep it updated. I seem to lose a lot of the newer ones from other climates over the first winter/spring – but I am not even sure what I have lost until I do inventory because some lost tags.

Black Canyon South Rim Fire – Watch Duty from today. About 15% contained.

Honestly, though, I am limited by time and water. I may replace some cultivators if I lose them, but I won’t be adding many more to my total. I’m at capacity. I am growing ditch lilies in the desert drought. I love daylilies, and they are survivors! My time goes into keeping those I have alive and healthy. And, my money goes into city water. I can’t imagine trying to hybridize or sell in my situation.

New Blooms and Current Bloom Rate

I have had a total of 139 cultivators bloom this season (out of around 190). That is a 73% bloom rate. Last year, we only got to the mid-sixties, so I am thrilled. And, the season isn’t over. In the high desert, 80% is a huge win. I need to fertilize, but without the monsoon moisture and cooler temps, I am waiting until next month. With daylilies in pots, I find applying liquid fertilizer improves bloom rate for the following year because the plant is more resilient.

Here are my “first bloom for 2025” cultivators since my last post:

The bloom peak is now over the top and past the plateau. However, I still have 30-40 cultivators in bloom daily, with 2-3 new ones most days. My beloved Ned Roberts’ southwest names spiders are just now peaking! Life gets extremely busy during daylily season, especially with my business and volunteer work.

Which is your favorite daylily from this post? For me, Zuni Thunderbird has always been a favorite! This computer is even named Zuni Thunderbird after the daylily.

Keep flourishing, Cathy H

A Dedication to My Daylily Friend and More Colorful Spiders!

July 23, 2024Leave a comment

A Dedication: For My Daylily Friend

Life can change in a moment. A couple of years ago, an online friend who I met through a Facebook daylily group called Daylily Lovers and I did a daylily exchange. He lived in the same USDA zone but in the eastern US. I’m out west. I sent him Saratoga Springtime and he sent me Autumn Minaret. I guess we were looking for daylilies from opposite seasons to add to our yards.

The daylily he sent didn’t do much last year, so today is the first ever bloom for Autumn Minaret. I want to dedicate this post to my friend. So much happened to him so quickly. I doubt he will ever see this post but I wonder how he are doing. The flower will always remind me of his love of daylilies.

Readers – Have you ever exchanged daylilies with a friend? How did it go? Please share the experience! Did you stay local or ship the daylily roots? Do you recommend daylily exchanges to others?

More Ned Spider Daylilies

I had two new Ned Roberts daylilies in the Southwest Road Trip Garden today: Black Arrowhead and Skinwalker. I like the dark daylilies, and I didn’t even realize Black Arrowhead had a scape. Nice surprise.

Skinwalker is an old favorite – love the pale yellow and the wispy petals.

Yesterday, was also a day of new spider daylilies from my Ned Roberts collection. Maybe my Southwest Road Trip Garden will catch-up a little. Cheyenne Eyes, Desert Icicle, Shape Shifter, and Taco Twister. That makes 31 total Roberts Spiders for the year out of 72, I believe. That’s 43% for the year. A dozen more and it’ll be 60%. Stretch goal!

Until the Last Daylily Blooms: Skinwalker Painting and Signed Prints

Immerse yourself in the serene beauty of nature with this exquisite, original hand-painted daylily wall art. Capturing the delicate forms of Skinwalker, a yellow daylily with subtle pink edging, this piece serves as a charming accent for any room.

Speaking of Skinwalker, I have an original hand painted wood panel or limited edition signed prints available of my Skinwalker painting. These are available through my Until the Last Daylily Blooms Sale and they are now 30% off through August 19. These are limited edition and available while supplies last. The original panel is now $24.50 (plus free shipping) and the prints are only $8.50. Click on photo to go to listing for the painting (or click here). Click here for listing of the limited edition signed prints.

Visit my Etsy shop Art from the Hartt at the link above – or my business website here. This is a time-limited sale – until my last daylily blooms!

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A post shared by Cathy Hartt (@artfromthehartt)

Centuplicate!

July 21, 2023July 21, 2023Leave a comment

The hot, dry weather continues here. The daylilies are popping and I had 10 cultivators with their first bloom of the year today. And, I’ve had 100 total cultivators bloom this season.

I can’t even tell you how many I have total. Probably 170-180. I added, Mother Nature subtracted. Plus, I just got a new computer and I haven’t moved my daylily software over yet. Too busy counting flowers on my wall.

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A post shared by Cathy Hartt (@coloradokiddaylilies)

Please enjoy my Instagram of today’s blooms. In order of appearance: Dr Doom, Wildwood Flower, Bela Lugosi, Bluegrass Music, Fol de Rol, Taco Twister, Chokecherry Mountain, Coral Taco, Treasure of the Southwest, Lobo Lucy,

The Summit is Just the Halfway Point

July 17, 2022Leave a comment

The thought that half or more of my scapes are still unbloomed is staggering. Especially days when there are a dozen premiers in one day. And, I’ve ordered 3 new daylilies plus replacements for 2 of mine that died last winter. It’s like raising the altitude of Everest a thousand feet when you are struggling to reach the summit. I’ll need to add on to my drip system.

I had some cool Ned Roberts spiders blooming for the first time today. 73 total in bloom and 67% of all my cultivators have bloomed so far.

Here we go!

We will see what tomorrow brings.

Staying engaged after the peak

August 4, 20213 Comments

I’m back, but only to catch up on finales since Sunday. Once school starts next week, it seems like the daylilies fade in my mind a little. But, this year I am semi-retired so hoping to stay a bit engaged. Last year, I did that huge 70+ buried pot repotting. That was 4 weekends of work and nearly ran into freeze. So, I suppose you could call that engaged.

This year’s project is to re-organize some of my less favorite/poor bloomers with some new cultivators. I just purchased Singing in the Sunshine, Irish Handshake, Ghost Ranch (more fans because I only have one), Off to See the Wizard, Memories of Oz, Sea Panther, Ruby Slippers, Blue Flirt, Wildwood Flower (mine died a couple years ago), and (maybe) another fan of Coyote Laughs (I am not sure the one I have is actually Coyote Laughs). That is 9 or 10 more, but I will be selling some of mine that I am eliminating. I also may do a big pot of leftovers – I have one that does great! I am amazed because it is soooo crowded.

Chaco Canyon – Finale 8.4. Bloomed from 6.27 to today – good year for this one!

I have several with only a few (if that) buds left. I think the closing daylilies this year will be Purple Corn Dancer, Navajo Curls, Purple Thunderbird and Adios Albuquerque. Will they last until September? Will there be an August surprise scape on a non-bloomer?

July Daylily Round-up N-Z

August 1, 20211 Comment

Here is part 1 of this blog post These posts include all daylilies that were in bloom in July in my yard. Please see first post for more details.

Nosferatu 7.12-7.19 (end 7.19-7.24 during vaca)

Oh Erica 7.17 (end 7.19-7.24 during vaca)

Pizza Crust (started week of 7.19)-present

Purple Grasshopper 6.11-present. Non-stop!

Red Hot Returns 7.11-7.19 (ended 7.19-7.25 during vaca)

Royal Braid 7.18 (ended 7.19-7.25 during vaca)

Ruby Spider 6.22-7.19 (ended 7.19-7.24 during vaca)

Spirit of the Morning 7.12-8.1 (unless I missed a bud)

No U, No V – I need to fix that with some new flowers 🙂

No X, either!

Yellow Punch 6.15-7.4 (first encore 7.31)

That is all for July, folks. Look for our Colorado Day (8/1) blooms up next!

Daylily Gridlock

July 12, 2021Leave a comment

I woke up to over 60 different daylily cultivator blooms today, again. I keep thinking that it is slowing down until I count the shots on my cell phone. So, if between taking the photos, posting the cell shots to Facebook, downloading/editing the camera shots, and blogging, I spend 5 minutes per cultivator (a conservative estimate) . . . well, do the math.

This year is weird because I made significant changes. I put my Southwest garden daylilies all in nicer pots with weed guard underneath (they are buried) to keep tree roots from destroying the pot. When I did that, I refreshed the soil with miracle grow plus their organic soil. It took weeks and a lot were really locked in with tree roots. I also refreshed the soil in all my front path pots – it had really collapsed over time. I added or improved drip systems in all areas that needed it. So, that is the positive. Oh, perhaps the biggest thing of all is that I am semi retired so have way more time to water regularly. My drip systems are not automatic.

On mother nature’s side, we are in a bad drought, again – it was a dry spring with a late, cold spell but little moisture. More like a fan got turned on high. We did have a little monsoon action for the week before the 4th of July. We are still somewhere between severe and extreme drought. And, that is an improvement from last month! It is hot with record breaking temps close to or at 100 degrees.

Put it all together and I have a lot of June bloomers that have scapes but haven’t bloomed yet, but my later bloomers are blooming pretty much on schedule. So, it is a bit of grid lock as the early birds are still in the intersections as the later blooms enter the scene. We are, therefore, still on the Grand Daylily Mesa (vs peak season) with 64 cultivators, with 5 premiers and 3 finales (so net gain of 2 in bloom).

Several of the premiers are Roberts spiders today – which is cool because we had several finales recently in that collection. Here we go!

Ghost Ranch 7.12 – Big surprise because I have had issues keeping this one alive in my yard. This is one fan that is in a group planter – the first bloom since I added the second try. I am buying a couple more fans this fall. This is a Roberts spider and it’s named after a place we are going camping next week!

Hesperus 7.12 – A giant yellow spider that brightens my driveway garden.

Nosferatu 7.12 – A large, dark purple daylily that adds a nice splash of color.

Spirit of the Morning 7.12 – Another Roberts spider. I think he named her because she has no UV resistance. Gotta get out early with the camera to see her at her best. I love the colors.

Taco Twister 7.12 – Reminds me of yellow ringlets. This one comes later in the season (about now) but I still have early birds like Kokopelli with buds.

Finales for today (if I didn’t miss one):

Let’s see what tomorrow brings. Today, I logged about 6 hours on daylily duty. How much time do you spend during peak season?

Sixty-Six Spiderman Daylilies for 2020

August 9, 2020Leave a comment

Hi all – When it is Saturday and it hasn’t been the fun day that I planned. COVID had driven the world mad – and they seem to all be mad at me. So, how about a little Ned Robert’s daylily therapy? I fell in love with Ned’s southwestern named daylilies after finding Kokopelli on Lily Auction 5 years ago. I have a collection of 70 ish now. I am including a few from 2019 if they didn’t bloom this year. Comment with your favorite! Direct from Montrose, Colorado . . .

July’s Colorful Parade

July 31, 20203 Comments

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!

Change of Shift

July 18, 2020Leave a comment

Change of shift is obviously when one group goes home and another one takes over. Well, since I left on vacation last Wednesday, I have had a lot of premiers and finales. I am not sure how many of each – but I do know that I have 44 in bloom today and 21 are new since I pulled out on my trip.

I had about 400 trip photos to go through, so I haven’t had time much time to count finales. I do know I missed at least one and others I only saw one bloom.

Was it worth it? Oh, yea – Colorado is beautiful and it is good to get out of town. Of course, the downside is that I now worry about COVID. Oh, I masked and carried hand sanitizer everywhere – around my neck. That said, there are a lot of people wondering around Colorado and our cases are on the rise.

I’ve now had about 104 bloom (+/-) so we are at a 61% bloom rate. I’d like to get to 80%, but we will see. I am just going to list the 21 new bloomers (Premiers) in alphabetic order: