Holmes, Holmes on the Range

I've known Mike and Sandy Holmes via email since early in 2011, when I got involved in testing and working on the help desk for the AHS Membership Portal, a participatory web site for daylily lovers who are members of the American Hemerocallis Society.  Mike and Sandy were the keystones, if there can be more than one, on the design and technical side of the project.

Yawn, I hear you say, so here's a picture to get things rolling.  This daylily is numbered C860.  I saw it in the Holmes garden on July 12 during an added day of garden touring in the Dayton area before the AHS Convention kicked off in Columbus.  Mike and Sandy are both fine hybridizers, and I wish I could say which one of them created this beautiful seedling which was marked in the garden for awards judges' consideration for the Junior Citation Award.

The J.C. award is reserved for distinctive seedlings of exceptional merit in every observable regard.  It requires the vote of ten awards judges, who are advised in the voting rules to "walk on by" and stop evaluating if they can't say why the seedling is distinctive, meaning something that represents an advance in hybridizing daylilies.

It's not just the color, form, or pattern on the flower.  There may be distinction in the health of the plant's foliage, in the spacing and number of branches on the stem, on the apparent rate of increase, or on the "floral presentation," which is what got my eye when I took this picture.  Three flowers open in the same visual plane without crushing each other.  Good color retention on a hot day after lunch.  

I'm sure that more than ten judges saw that seedling on the day I was there, so it will be interesting to see if it pulls in the votes.  There were other fine seedlings up for J.C. votes in the Holmes garden as well as in the Polston garden earlier in the day, so we judges had a lot to remember and consider, not to mention the seedlings we see in our own regions.

Here's a look at Mike and Sandy's "plantation" as I stepped off the tour bus.

An even larger area to the left of this picture is planted even more densely with named varieties and thousands of their seedlings.  I envy photographers who are able to position themselves instinctively to get the front of people rather than the back.  I hardly ever do!  That's Keb (my wife Kathy) on the far left side of the picture in the orange top.  I can tell by her posture that she is on a mission to see as many examples as possible of the sort of daylily she started hybridizing this summer...large open forms with great color on tall scapes.

I stoped to admire the color on "C1485" and noted that it blooms in a way that gives me multiple perspectives on the form of the flower.

The one below was labeled "SD156 Best," so I suppose SD156 was the number assigned to a particular cross, and "best" means this one is the pick of the litter.  I confess I wanted to grow every marked seedling, but I doubt every one will make it to registration.  They've got so many winners here that they can be very picky.

Here's some "landscaping" to provide a break from optic overload.

I wish there had been time to savor the details of this, but there were too many good daylilies to see, and I barely scratched the surface before the bus captain blew the departure whistle.  I did happen to notice, back under a shade tree, my friend David Kirchhoff, who was offering refreshments to the visitors.  Susan Okrasinsky took this picture of David and me as he pointed to where I had to go immediately and see "the blue daylily," PIGMENT OF THE IMAGINATION by Ohio hybridizer, Richard Norris.

Here is Richard's astounding flower.  It changes color during the day, but I think I saw it at the maximum illusory moment of "blue."

Mike and Sandy sell their registered daylilies, and the garden had signs in front of what was available.  Here's IMPRESSIONIST SKY.

Here's SORCERER'S MASQUERADE.  You can see how the exceptional Midwest draught has burned the foliage on some of these plants.  I imagine untold thousands of gallons of irrigation water have been lavished on these beds to help the plants bring their seed pods to maturity as well as keep the garden attractive for visitors.

Smiles wherever you look.  Here's a tree of bottles to go with bottle bushes.  In the background, the bus is waiting, and I'm late!  Thanks Sandy and Mike!

The Rain Question

When I was a college lad pining away for a lost love who ultimately married me, I wrote a little poem with a cutesy touch....words dispersed across the space of the page.  The last lines went,

"and ask myself
the rain question.

Why
     Why
          Why
               Why....

Too much time on my hands or something.

This morning it is rainy.  It's not the volume we need, but it's a tad more than nothing.  Kathy and I bounded out of bed at 5:30, saw it wasn't raining yet, and dashed outside to gather pollen.  The rain finally came.  Between showers I took more daylily pictures.  I like to document the way the flowers react to temperatures and also how they bloom differently from day to day.

This is Phil Korth's GRACE LIKE RAIN looking better than I've seen it in the bast three years and probably looking best with raindrops all over it.

 

Nearby is the kind of chalky white daylily I prefer above other shades of white.  This is Patrick Stamile's WHITE MOUNTAIN.

 

By comparison, Phil Korth's AUGUST WEDDING looks like a creamy surface on a melon base color. 

This is is Larry Grace's BLUEGRASS MUSIC.  When I felt the rain begin to fall I grabbed the only blossom I'll see this year and brought it inside to collect the pollen.  Why only one flower?  There's some kind of malaise affecting how the daylilies grow, and many think the oddities are related to the mood swings of our weather gods this year.

The background on this flower is some sort of off-white.  The shades of blue and the pattern are what I love about this flower.

The strongest color in my entire collection belongs to David Kirchhoff's BETTY FORD, a strong contender for the top award this year and one of the best reds by the reigning master breeder of red daylilies.

In the vicinity is OBOE D'AMORE by Mort Morss (pictured below).  The large warm center of this daylily evokes memories of the warm center in the tone of the oboe d'amore, which makes this daylily a strong marker for the remembered sound, just as David Kirchhoff's MARIA CALLAS has a quality of color easily as rich and complex as the sound of Maria Callas at her best.

Here's a daylily that almost never opens well in my garden, but did a passable job this morning, and which has a color that is really a study in unreconciled genetic conflicts.  It's REGGIE MORGAN by Ted Petit and its complexities are the main reason for breeding with it.  If I weren't a hybridizer, I wouldn't grow this daylily because the weather here seems to inhibit full, flat opening most of the time.

A much better Ted Petit daylily in my garden, virtually perfect every day, is OCEANS ELEVEN.  I can't imagine ever tiring of this one.  I remember a poem of Rubert Brooke that begins, "O, Death will find me long before I tire/ Of watching you..."

Try to imagine OCEANS ELEVEN as a pastel yellow flower, just try.  The recent weather has prompted the advance of "melon" tones within the color of this one, giving the pastel yellow a toasty look.

Speaking of blue centers, you may notice concentric zones of bluish color on the face of OCEANS ELEVEN.  I see them today also in the eye of Mort Morss's BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE, which is coming into its own as the plant adds mass.

If the weather "toasted" the pastel color of OCEAN'S ELEVEN, it ramped up the furnace warmth in the orange of Bill Maryott's OKTOBERFEST, which is an eye-catcher in any quality of color it displays.

Another quality of daylily color is called "polychrome," which involves blends of yellow, cream, gold, and pink, though not always on the same flower.  Curt Hanson's THE GOLDILOCKS EFFECT is said by Curt to be the best polychrome.  I don't believe he's being a huckster to say so.  In my experience, Curt simply calls them as he sees them and is unashamed to announce which of his are the best.  I love this one!

If you hybridize, this is a fantastic parent.

There's a unique daylily here named THE BAND PLAYED ON by Patrick Stamile.  It's a rusty russet color with a black violet eye and edge.  I go for very dark and mysterious flowers like this.  My clump put up three scapes, all in bloom, so here are "The Three Tenors!"

Finally, back to blue purple and a fine example of the achievements of the late Ron Valente from Maine, CASCO BAY DELIGHT.  On many mornings, this doesn't open fully until late in the morning, but this morning it was flat open when I went out at 6.  I'm very glad I brought this into the collection.  I doubt that Ron Valente ever registered an average daylily.