Wednesday Garden Sales

Hello Daylily Friends,

Wednesday was a wonderful day. We had five of our good friends to help us with digging plants for our garden visitors, and we had thirty-two families purchase daylilies. Seedlings were sold for $25.00, and then most of the garden flowers were sold at special bargains. Two new Club members were added as a result of the Garden Sales. I gave each new member a free $100.00 daylily, and they paid $20.00 to join the Club, with the understanding that they must attend a Club meeting before the end of 2009. A really good deal: get a new $100.00 Waldrop introduction, and pay only $20.00 to join the Club. You can sense the excitement of the Wednesday Garden Sales by seeing all our friends surrounding Diana's work station.

Out in the field where the seedlings are growing we sold many daylilies. However, I can barely tell that anything was dug or moved. There are so many seedlings that I could sell a "truck-load," and still not miss anything. I'm showing a picture of several friends in the seedling beds. While many friends were in the seedling beds we had one "brown spotted deer with white dots" to jump the fence and enter the yard. It was just a little deer. He was upset that everyone seemed to be removing what he expected to be his supper. I quickly took his picture! It is no good to have deer so close to the garden but so far we have managed to co-exist. Diana helps with this because she spreads "milorganite" around the daylilies and the deer pass by the daylilies to avoid the bad smell.

Even with all of the excitement of the Garden Sales, there were still a few new blooms that had to be noticed. The first new bloom was a cross between my Seedling 7-233 and Best Edge. You may remember that my Seedling 7-233 won "Best in the Show" at our Daylily Show at the Cobb Galleria Center. Then, Best Edge is Matthew Kaskel's seedling. Here is a picture of the new daylily that I now call Seedling 9-38. I think that Seedling 9-38 is distinctive because it has such an unusual "salmon color" with a wide edge and several "teeth" that are quite noticeable. My good friend Lee Pickles saw Seedling 9-38 bloom, and he took many pictures as well. There are still questions to be answered about this seedling, such as, how will it handle the winter weather? I'll keep you posted.

Then another new bloom that I had was a cross between Heartbeat of Heaven and Tet. James McCaskill. What a beautiful bloom. I had had about 50 flowers from this cross, and all of them bloomed outside with no help from the Greenhouse. I am not really satisfied with the branching on this new seedling, but I do have a beautiful dormant lavender that I will cross with it and see if I can create something very nice that continues to be dormant. I would like a daylily that looks like Tet. James McCaskill with its lovely green eye and a lavender color, that is tall with branching and bud count. Is this too much to ask?

Well, come back tomorrow and I will tell you about my "Looming Disaster" in the Greenhouse.

Bill