Tour 2

Today was the 2nd garden tour of the season.  This one is specifically to feature our daylilies.  In a way it's a harder tour than the 1st one which featured the entire gardens, because these people know their hemerocallis!

When we prepared for this tour, we ignored the weeds and "fluffy" hedges.  We focused solely on the daylilies themselves.

Each individual plant was deadheaded and trimmed neatly.  Any yellowed leaves were inspected for bugs and disease - their yearly plant "physical".

I gave a sincere talk to each one of the flowers, encouraging them to bloom brightly and look really happy.  I think it worked.

Since the season is running about 7 days ahead of schedule this year, our visitors were able to see some of the later blooming daylilies that normally aren't out during the tours.

And since most of my daylilies are historic plants, which most people don't collect in this area, they were able to see blossoms that they had never seen before in person.

And, of course, this particular daylily is only in our garden (and 2 of our friends - it was their wedding gift).  This is the one that my DH and I registered.  That makes it pretty special.

Since we plant several new cultivars of daylily each year, some of them are blooming for us for the first time this year.  It's always exciting to see them popping up in the gardens - adding their splash of color to the rest of the blooms.

Some of the colors are quite vibrant - they look as they are swallowing the sunshine.

We had some wonderful folks stop by to view the gardens and had some serious talks about our hemerocallis collection.  (Yes, some people take this quite seriously!)  But we also had a lot of fun meeting people that we only email during the course of the year.

My DH and I love our garden tours - and there were hundreds of flowers putting on a great show today - but I'm glad we're done with them for the season.  They are a lot of work, preparing the gardens and all.

I think that next weekend we're going to do something a bit simpler - like maybe just mow the lawn.