daylilies

The daylilies have almost gone by.  There are a few more days of blossoms, I think.  Each blossom gets one day, then, sadly, gone until next summer.  Sort of amazing - I try to remember to observe closely because I might miss something magical.

I fell in love with daylilies while I was growing up in rural Connecticut.  They just grew wild along the road and old stone walls throughout the countryside.  My mom grew them - by the pond, by the barn, by the road, by the house, and by the compost pile.  When I moved away from home and could have my own garden, she gave me my first plants - divisions of decades old daylilies and iris. I still have their descendants in my Maine garden today, divided and multiplied annually.

I think I like daylilies best when they are random, unexpected, and un-deadheaded, and not necessarily in a formal garden.  I imagine that they've been in that spot for a hundred years, maybe outliving any original intent or design   They are beautifully common and happily surprising.  They are whimsical.  

Like by a woodpile and paving stones.

Or a telephone pole.

Or in front of a house.

Or by the harbor. 

Or holding a spider's web.

Or in Monet's Garden . . .

Claude Monet
Hemerocallis
1914-1917

"I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers."  - Claude Monet

Claude Monet
Daylilies on the Riverbank
1914-1917

"It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way.  So we must dig and delve unceasingly."  Claude Monet