CULTURE
Daylilies
By Kevin Johnson
My mother-in-law has Alzheimer’s. She doesn’t know it. She just
thinks her children have maliciously sent her to a nursing community where
she doesn’t want to be. She wants to go home.
To her, home is Massapequa Park, New York. That was her childhood home—sixty years ago. She hasn’t lived there since she was ten. But one of the things she remembers about Long Island and its backyard gardens are the daylilies that grew there. Not surprising. Daylilies are hard to miss. They’re almost five feet tall and have a gaping maw of a bloom, the kind of flower that throws its head back and cheers.
My mother-in-law was that way too. She was a cheerleader
back in a time when that meant bobby socks, floor length-skirts and white
cotton gloves. To this day she can still finish the now un-PC chant of “Cowboys
and Indians.” She kept her hair short and strawberry blonde eschewing
the long, romantic chestnut curls the boys found so romantic then. Dating
her could be a challenge. She was open with her opinions. Smart and quick
with both affections and dislikes.
She married a Naval officer, a handsomely spit-shined Annapolis grad, and
together they had seven children. But in the years that followed he would
turn into a complicated man of deep delusions, depressive withdrawals and
irrational conspiracy. She tried to keep up but would never know if today
would be one of his manic or depressive ones. Eventually he moved into a treatment
house, and she and all seven children relocated back into the city. In time,
he died of lung cancer.
Shortly after she met a grief counselor, an ex-priest who took a liking to her, and they got married. Later as he waited for her behind a cup of coffee in a Burger King, he was shot and killed by a deranged man taking his anger out on the world. It made national news but she doesn’t remember any of this. Not a moment. All she remembers are the daylilies.
Despite the name, daylilies are not true lilies but part of the small genus Hemerocallis. The name is based on the Greek words for day and beauty. Their flowers are typically lily-shaped with colors of variegated orange, yellow or pink that open at sunrise and wither to die at sunset. Because individual flowers are so short-lived, they don’t make good cut flowers and are usually not used in formal flower arranging. But they are nice in more relaxed displays, as in the garden or around the house, and make good summer companions.
Daylilies don’t require much care. They grown in almost any well-drained ph neutral soil, tolerate dry conditions and are not afraid of full sun. In fact, daylilies do so well that sometimes they grow as "weeds” and were once considered verbotin in a “cultured” or manicured garden. Take a drive almost anywhere on the highways and you’ll see them covering the hillside like orange snow banks almost anywhere in Chicago and Illinois -- surprising, since they are originally from Asia and not native to our soil.
I was in The Great Smoky Mountains in Kentucky recently, where I had the chance to visit the garden of Brett Shelton, the director of the Bluegrass Hemerocallis Society. Like other daylily affienados, she has an almost crazed compulsion for the flower and grows some 225 varieties around her home, all blooming at the time like a floral fireworks explosion. Their names are often inspired by famous people, religions, popular songs, and sayings. The "Julie Newmar", for example, has flowers that are light pink with raspberry eyes. But she also cultivates large “Gadsen Goliaths” and indigo “Mexicali Blues” and has been known to plant the “Court Magician”, the “It’s My Party”, “Girls Rule” and the “Wang Dang Doodle”.
Shelton has seen almost them all. “In my garden you’ll find some daylilies that are $5, some that are $300, and some that cost as much as $500 for just one plant.” Shelton became interested in daylilies after a neighbor gave him one about six years ago. Enthralled, he started building his collection and now tracks each kind he has--and how much he paid for it--on his computer.
We walked the narrow path through his backyard garden shoulder-to-shoulder for fear of bumping any of the proud, tall stalks. In deference to my Illinois home, Shelton showed me his collection of a lily called the “Mary Todd” -- named after President Lincoln’s wife -- which blooms about eight inches wide into a bright yellow flower. “Those are winners of the Stout Silver Medal, the highest award in daylilydom,” he said proudly.
Daylilies are usually propagated by division, and they are one of the easiest perennials to divide. Just by taking two digging forks, inserting them through the middle of the clump back to back, and prying the plant apart, you can turn one daylily into two. You can divide them down to as small as a single fan, and they transplant easily.
But the remarkable thing about daylilies is how they bloom. Each individual flower lasts for only one day. Everyday, a one-time-only shot to partake of the world’s pleasure.
My mother-in-law, Francis P. Healy or “Frankie” to her friends, was once clear-eyed and conscious. Self-actualized and aware. Now she sits all day by a window. At 70, she’s the youngest woman in the full-time assistance ward. If I seem cavalier about her history, it’s because it doesn’t matter. Not to her. Not anymore. That day has passed and she has little use for yesterdays.
Her life is free of the burdens of knowing the difficult choices her children make on her behalf. But what lingers, like a sweet floral fragrance on the air, is the lesson she learned in her garden. Tulips drop their petals, mums fade to brown, and foxtails simply blow away. No one escapes the cycle of life. And for daylilies it arrives earlier than most. The 17th century English Poet Benjamin Johnson put it best:
It is not growing like a tree
in bulk doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere.
A lily of a day
is fairer in May
Although it fall and die that night,
It was the plant of flower and light,
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be.
-Benjamin Johnson
Frankie raised seven beautiful, well-adjusted children and I was lucky enough to marry one of them. There are people who believe that everything sails ahead as planned. That combs and toothbrushes must lie in the right order, shoes must face in the right direction, steps must be counted -- or some dread cosmic punishment will follow. Maybe that’s the garden path to madness. Our lives rarely proceed smoothly from Point A to Point B. But if we rise up to meet each day with the enthusiasm of the daylily, knowing that we shall have only one life to live that day, perhaps we will make the most of the randomness of our existence.
The mind’s a weird piece of business. Both foreign and familiar. Just like every new day. But through it all we try to bloom where they plant us. To stand tall and live each day like one giant pep rally.
