Filling in the Design

I didn't plan to fill these beds with daylilies, but I'm in a race to get hundreds of them in the ground by the end of this week.  This morning I filled the bed on the right and started in on the bed beyond.  I took these pictures after breakfast, so there's a reddish cast to the light because of the low angle of the sun.

This angle of view gives you a better idea of how I'm using circles and curves in the back yard.  The lot is shaped like a quarter of a pie, and the house is a long box, so I'm using curves wherever possible.

In the bed on the right I started to introduce perennials other than daylilies.  I liked the effect, so after lunch I went out and bought a carload of more perennials for the next areas I plant.  Some of the plants in the near beds were "cooked" on Friday or Saturday when I dug and planted them.  I may have laid them out in the sun too long.  I think four to six of them are looking so bad that I'll be amazed if they recover.  I corrected my methods in case what I did was the cause of the plants' distress.

This is my "keeper" bed for further evaluation of selected seedlings.  At the moment it's about half-full.  I expect I'll fill it and overflow it by the weekend as I work through all the pots in the driveway.

 Meanwhile, my contractor, Steve Brandt, who has been working out rain drainage away from the basement and grading the top of the back yard, got the idea of breaking up the soil of my seedling beds with his backhoe.  This was a godsend, because there are big chunks of stone and Highway 94 asphalt in the ground.  The rubble dates back to a request by the former owner for some "fill" from the highway crew.  He should have said "clean fill."  Instead, he got something that must have caused no end of tale-telling at MODOT.  Some joke, huh?

This is my seedling crop now.  Only a few crosses haven't germinated.

These will be transplanted in August to the beds that Steve broke up yesterday and today.  I'll go through them with my tiller and amend the soil with compost as I go.

Blooming in the display bed in front this morning was a breathtaking large flower by Gerda Brooker, AUTUMN REFLECTION.  It is registered as a "tangerine self."  If you factor out the red shift from morning sunlight, what I have is a creamy yellow that wouldn't ever pass for tangerine color.

It's a stunning flower out of J.T. Davis x Tet. Siloam Ralph Henry.  Maybe it will show a tangerine side to its personality when established in the garden.