Friday Fabulous Flower - To Day Lily

Got a fabulous(?) flower picture sent from a friend and then decided to use one of Mrs. Phactor's daylilies, and then it sort of dawned on me that both were in a sense lilies at least in the old taxonomic sense of the lily family.  So first up is the genus Sansevieria, snake plant, or mother-in-laws tongue, or bow string hemp.  Lots of people grow this plant because it is tough and easy to grow, and not many people use the leaf fibers for bow string anymore, but you could.  Most people don't notice the little white flowers although the inflorescences can be fairly large.  So our friend thought that it was sort of fabulous to have their semi-mistreated plant flower, and now here it is certified fabulous.
Daylilies (Hemerocallis) are one of the most widespread and colorful of summer perennials, and TPP has no idea what this particular yellow-orange variety is called.  Our current yard had a lot of daylilies when we moved in but they were all the invasive (stoloniferous) orange ones (H. fulva), so-called "ditch weed" type. They have mostly been removed by Mrs. Phactor using sheer stubbornness to eliminate them.  Her tip: never plant stoloniferous daylilies.  This particular variety has really big flowers and makes for a large display.  The lily family was a giant glump of lineages and TPP hasn't yet even figured out all the families the former lily family has been broken into.  Snake plant is in the Asparagus family, and daylilies are now in the Asphodela family, the "true lilies" TPP thinks.  So today, lilies, or two lilies today, or to day daylily.

Friday Fabulous Flowers - June is for lilies

Just a few years ago, a friend and colleague got herself married in June, and Mrs. Phactor decided to provide flowers, so a lot of lilies were planted throughout her perennial garden. Now each June the garden bursts into a riot of colorful lilies, big ones, tall ones, short ones, speckled ones. Most of the other summer perennials are just starting so the lilies bridge over a somewhat dull flowering period. A photographic selection is provided for your enjoyment.

Mid-week odds & ends

Rose, Pete - Always liked the guy as a scrappy player for the Reds. Hard to believe he'd throw a game just to make a few bucks betting, but when you break the rules and then lie about it, you've given them enough rope to really hang you. 
June rain - TPP has recorded 7.25 inches of rain this month when the area usually averages around 4.25 inches for the whole month. It's raining now and heavy rains are predicted over night. Never seen the soil so wet for so long in the summer. Weeds pull pretty easy, but all this rain makes them grow like crazy and totally weeded beds now need weeding again.
Lilies - June is lily month in our gardens. Mrs. Phactor likes her lilies, daylilies, oriental lilies, tiger lilies, all types. So some colorful masses of color are gracing the gardens, now if life just allowed us to sit on the patio a bit more and enjoy the show.
Sarah Palin - You know your irrelevance factor is climbing fast because our country's favorite incoherent commentator did not have her Phlox News contract renewed. Now she's really yesterday's news. Makes her quest for cash a lot tougher.
Confederate flag - TPP's Mother was a southerner from Mississippi. But she had the poor white perspective on race where you both lived the same way, sometimes right across the dirt road from each other, so played with their kids, and you understood that the differences were those of opportunity and money. And she got out via marriage. She'd cheer for the Arkansas Razorbacks or Mississippi women in beauty contests, but that was as much support for the "south" as she had. She did love gardenias.
Father's Day - The F1 remembered her Dad and brought many little gifts: rambutan, papaya, pepino, a blue cheese, a raclette cheese, some fancy coffee, a tamarind concentrate, and sour patch kid candies. How thoughtful! Rambutan in USA markets is fairly new, but tropical fruit that has to travel a long way is often not tip top produce. The leathery rind of rambutans and lychees should be red and pliable. Because they are often picked too green they may not have the best flavor. Some of these were pretty good, about 5.5 on the 10 point fresh tropical scale; they others were past ediblity. Made a great papaya salad with coconut, lime juice, cilantro, and hot sauce. Some of these orange-fleshed papayas are surprisingly good, maybe reaching an 7.5 to 8 flavor-wise, if you know how to pick them.
Currants - Picked several quarts of red currants from our 3 young bushes. This is enough for a year's supply of currant jelly. But today the aging back is complaining about work this low.
Japanese beetles - They have hatched, but no telling how big the population will be. Hoped the wet weather in combination with milky spore fungus would keep them in check. But bought some more netting from favorite fabric shop to cover new apple trees anyways.

Where did June go?

Next week is the 4th of July?  What?  Where did June go?  Dang, guess we've been busy because June just evaporated. Several signs suggest everything but us are on schedule. Had some black raspberries for breakfast; they aren't cultivated, just "tended" in the wildish black raspberry preserve at the rear of our property. Had 2/3s of a garden tomato, the 1st, and it was wonderful, but some tomato-loving critter ate a big chunk out of it. Typical. Having a wildlife friendly yard isn't all its cracked up to be at times. Zucchini, beans, peppers, eggplant are on the way. Usually by mid-June our gardens are in good shape and then the lilies, all sorts, break into flower for the mid-summer. This year there's still a lot of our yearly cleanup to do, and then all the gardens that we usually don't have to do anything to.  Where did all the weeds come from? The Phactors are still planting new things mostly to repair the winter's damage. So work is longer term. Some American hollies had been demonstrating for several years that hollies don't like growing in the upper Midwest; this winter truly convinced them.  TPP bit the bullet and removed them, well, what was left of them today. You know you've done the right thing when the space left looks better than it did with the hollies in place. Four of them were females, and birds loved the berries, especially cedar waxwings, but the male tree totally died so even if the others were growing well, their best feature, the red berries, were going to be absent.  A relocation of a mock orange and a new oak leafed hydrangea should help fix things up.  A ever larger Magnolia salicifolia is encroaching on this garden from the other side of a fence, so not so much space to fill. All this cutting and pulling is real work and TPP has had enough of it for today. Time to cool down, clean up, and blog.  Off to a cocktail party at 5. Later to Hyde Park.