Gaylynn’s Red Daylilies

Once Upon a Time, My Friend Shared Her Red Daylilies

This, to me, is one of the sweetest faces of gardening.  Not only this lovely red daylily bloom… but also (can’t leave the metaphors alone),  I’m speaking of sharing.  Garden abundance is wonderfully shareable. Many garden favorites multiply prolifically when they are happy.  They outgrow their spaces, make little babies, send out runners and rhizomes. Spread. Sometimes consider taking over entirely. Cups running over.  It makes sense to pass the abundance on.  And it’s a beautiful way  to bond, both with plants, and with people.

(Interestingly enough, the most shareable plants also happen to be the hardiest, the most foolproof.  This is gardening at it’s simplest, and cheapest. )

I’ve gardened in three different places now, and I owe the lavishness of each garden largely to friends. My first garden was lush with purple irises my mother in law had planted (we bought our first home from my in laws). I loved them. And miss them now. My second garden inherited more sophisticated blooms from my friend Stephanie, a devoted and astute gardener. Fairy tale campanula in an unusual, burgundy dotted strain, bronze sedges, obscure salvias, dwarf sky blue iris, a lovely clematis, a rare, subtly colored foxglove. The dwarf blue iris went crazy in my borders, and when my friend Gaylynn started her new garden, I had plenty to share with her.

When we moved from Washington, I missed my second garden.  Painfully.  And I missed the friends I’d shared gardens with. On one quick visit back to familiar places and favorite faces, I toured Gaylynn’s thriving new garden. Lavender, roses, black eyed susans, iris…lots of pretties, but she was proudest of her beautiful red daylilies. They weren’t in bloom at the time, and she lamented that I couldn’t see how pretty they were.  And then she grabbed a spade and dug a chunk of daylily plant right out of the ground (which of course is how daylily sharing is done), put it in a pot, and gave it to me to take home in my car. Along with some of the blue miniature irises that had gone as crazy in her garden as they had in mine.

Daylilies are tough. My Utah garden wasn’t quite ready for planting when I got home…the daylilies stayed marooned in a little pot through the hot month of July before I finally had their bed made and could tuck them in.

They bloomed last year, hinting at future glory. And this year…oh my. They bloomed for weeks. Huge, perfectly red blooms. Each one a reminder of one of my favorite people on the planet. Smiling cheerfully at me every day (ah, that’s what daylily means!) through my kitchen window…

(I smuggled this photo of Gaylynn and her daughter Hannah over from Facebook… just so y’all would know she’s for real.  Not an imaginary friend.  Though imaginary friends are great too.)