Today was a frustrating day in the garden. It was so gray and overcast that pictures were all washed out. When Bob came home for lunch, he suggested to try the white paper trick. We had heard it works to make color more true, but don't usually mess with it. It worked though, and we got some decent pictures.

TrueNorth Queen Bee is Canadian bred. I was afraid it might be somewhat tender since it comes from Vancouver where temperatures are more moderate. It seems to like our climate though, and we certainly like it. It is large and flat.

Snidely Whiplash is another from Canada, this one from Mike Georges.

Viva Pinata always does well here.

Queen of the Garden today is Let's Dance Tonight X Gary Lynn's Calliopsis. Debra asked in another thread about evergreens that do well in the north. Let's Dance Tonight is a semi-evergreen from Petit-Goff, but it does very well here. It's quite fertile too and looks like it will give us some fance babies.

The mini queen is Merry Moppet X Sprinkled with Springtime. If Merry Moppet weren't such a good parent, I would have dug it up and thrown it away years ago. It rarely opens well, but the offspring don't seem to have that problem.

I post High Water Mark X Tet. Rose F. Kennedy to illustrate how seedlings change. We moved this after three years from the seedling bed to the observation bed, based mostly on the flower and the parentage, not the vigor. We would have said that most offspring from Tet. RFK that we have grown were puny with short scapes and low bud counts. This year this one is a monster with scapes about 40 inches and about 20 buds on a scape. It makes you wonder how many great daylilies we have thrown away after three years because of low bud counts in the first three years.

That's all for me now. The weather forecasters predict more of the same weather for the next ten days. When is summer truly going to be here?

Nancy