Silly Reasons - Good Results

Except for the few very disciplined gardeners (and I personally know none) we tend to have changing priorities or reasons for buying the plants we purchase each year.

• The years when we first started and bought and planted willy-nilly.
• The years where we wanted a specific color.  With my daylilies, I had the red years and the yellow/gold years.
• The years where we decided to make new beds and formally landscape things.
• The years we happen to be at a nursery and fell in love with something different.
• The years where we'd bought all of our favorite perennial the local nurseries had to offer and started going bigger and better.
• The years we started looking for new and more beautiful/unique traits on our favorite perennial. 
• The years we went on garden walks and realized there was so much more we could be doing.
• The years we totally lost our mind and you know how THAT turned out. 

I can look at a plant in my yard and almost always tell you what stage I was in when it was purchased.  

Kady in front of Bitsy before it got moved. (I love my garden
pictures that feature grandkids!)

This all came to mind when I was cleaning up my daylily records; a winter project.  I came to the daylily "Bitsy" and knew it was when I decided to make a family daylily bed.  I'd buy a daylily simply for the name.  I'd plop it into the family bed and it became a riotous mass of colors and traits.  

Twice I've had to take everything out of the bed for house related reasons.  At that time, I'd take a few of the more simple ones and move to other beds.  Bitsy, bought for one of my little kitties, was moved out to a west dry bed that I seldom managed.  (Out of sight out of mind.)  It struggled to the point of near death.  Eight years later, not one to rush a task, I moved it to a new bed that had many more favorable conditions.  In two years, it was everything it was suppose to be.

2016 - settling into new bed.

So here's the scoop on this small little daylily.  The flowers are certainly sweet but have none of the fancy traits of new hybrids.  Registered by Warner in 1963, it wasn't bred for fancy, it was bred for unique blooming traits.  A good reminder that the plant is as important as the bloom. 

There's a reason it's won five major awards; the last almost 40 years after registration.  Not a bad run for any plant.

The flowers:  1.5 inch clear bright lemon yellow with light green throat.  It's registered at 18 inches but the scapes on my plant are all of at least 24 inches, holding it high above the grassy-like slender foliage.  

2017 - Always in flower.

OK, here's the big fun stuff:  

It is one of the earliest blooming lilies (05-29-2018) but is considered a continuous and repeat bloomer.  Mine was still blooming after the first frost last year.

Note:  A light frost will not damage a daylily bud and it will still bloom.  

It branches; meaning the blooms are not all on single scapes (stalk) but have stems coming out from every stalk with blooms on each.  This makes for a fully covered plant.

It tolerates extreme temperatures and water.

I use this same 8.5 x 5.5 inch book to visually indicate
the size of the flower.  

It's nocturnal!  This is pretty wonderful for a flower that only blooms one day and usually only in the daylight.  Planted next to a place you sit in the evenings, it provides a bright yellow glow.

This little beauty is one that I consider a "workhorse" and even though it's little blooms aren't complex, I wouldn't want a daylily garden without one.   

Bitsy is an example of a phase or reason I bought a plant morphing into a much better result.  

This one shows the branching and bud count.