June -- the roadsides and stream banks in our area are ablaze with wild orange day lilies. Hardy, rapid growers, they do well wherever there's a bit of sun and moisture.Each plant produces multiple blooms and each bloom lasts only a day -- hence the name.
But they aren't wild and they aren't lilies. Hemerocallis fulva is an import from China and Japan that naturalized long ago. The unopened buds are good in stir fries and the flowers can be dipped in tempura batter and fried to produce a lacy, mildly oniony tasting treat.
There are only 20 species of Hemerocallis world wide but breeders have come up with some 20,000 hybrids, a few of which are blooming in our yard just now.
Orange day lilies grow wild along the branches in our part of Carolina -- their massed presence makes up for what they lack in subtlety. I have day lilies in an array of colors and forms that I find much prettier, but these wildings are just so obliging. You can't kill em with a stick and they multiply freely. Plus, what a nice complement to Maggie's red-orange fur.
This beauty is a tame hydrangea (there are wild white ones too.) The local name for these flowering shrubs is 'high geranium,' which has a certain charm to it, don't you think?
(Over at Radine Trees Nehring's blog, there's a post about using dialect in writing -- is this a big no-no . . . or not? You probably know which side I come down on.)
This old building above, once a barn and now a garage/toolshed down at our lower place, was briefly used as a school when the nearby schoolhouse burned -- way back in the early years of the last century. There's no sign left of the scholars -- except for this disused door. But I like to think that on recess, they waded in the branch where the daylilies still grow.
