Hi Dianne! It's lovely to make a new DL friend! I'm making lots of new DL's buddies there in Texas! My husband flies C-130's for the Navy and I got into daylily hybridizing after becoming a Garden Designer a few years ago. Now, like us all, I'm completely hooked....Starting selling unbloomed seedlings on the LA last year and made so many wonderful new friends. I find DL people so generous and warm, from the non-pros to the big hybridizers. We e-mail and call each other and just share & chat about them for hours. I will be doing my very own hybridizing this season and can hardly wait! Just received new intro's from Florida today and can will share the photos with you all!

We also have no children, but our animals are our kids. We have 3 cats and rescue everything from domestic to wildlife!

Share some photos of your garden with us - I'll do the same.

Welcome and Happy Spring,

Chris at Garden Fantasies

Hi Dianne,
I've been into daylilies since way back when in my 4-h days as a kid(let's just say thats more than 2 decades ago lol).I only have about 90 or so. I used to have other perennials and a mixed border with shrubs, grasses etc... Now I mostly have lilies and when I need room for more I yank out unwanted perennials to make room.I just got into pollen dabbing this year.
I worked in the nursery industry for 13 years before my chubby body decided it couldn't take the physical demands of hauling 50# bags of soil and fertilizer all day and still garden @ home.
That's when I moved into retail. I've sold kitchen goods, toys and now I sell pools. It's a neat industry with many challenging things to learn. I'm 5 years into it and I still have alot to learn, particularly where parts are concerned. It's a great job.
I live with my folks and 19 cats that are my children. Yes I am the crazy cat lady !!! LOL!!!
They all go to the vets and are very well cared for. They eat before I do. They also own @ least 1 of every toy you can find @ petsmart and petco and have moved on to buying neat stuff online.(I told you i was a crazy cat lady.)I can't imagine life without them.
To make me happy just give me lots of cats, a place to plant lilies and a good book or 2.

Hi everyone,
I'm Nina in Lancaster county PA. I own my own general contracting business, but gardening is my first love.
I have a big back yard and it was full of many perennials, but they are slowly(quickly) being replaced with daylilies and my seedlings. I also have several native plants that will always stay, cause I believe in balance. I've only been dabbing for a couple years, so this year should be the first bloom for many of my babies. Come on summer!!
I have three grown kids. One is a teacher, the other a JC Penney financial manager, and my son is trying to graduate from HS. I have 2 pugs that are my empty nest kids. Dante and Oliver are great company in the garden, even if they like to pull my plant tags out and run away with them.
My wonderful husband is from Cuba and works in our business, as well as builds wonderful things in the yard for me. We have two Koi ponds and a lovely patio and arbor, and the best is the 16' x 14' greenhouse he built me. Needless to say it's full of daylily seedlings.
If anyone is ever in SE PA, give me an email and come visit the garden. I love to talk about plants.

Chris, I bet you really enjoy being a Garden Designer. I think I would enjoy owning my own nursery and doing some landscape design. I would love to see some pictures of some of the gardens you have designed. Do you have to move very often with your husband's job?

Kimkats, wow 19 cats. That's a lot. I know I love my animals and they are spoiled rotten but I think I would pull my hair out if I had 19 cats. LOL... :O)

Nina, it is really exciting to see your first daylilies bloom. I will be having some new one's coming this spring and I can't wait to see them bloom. If your hubby ever gets bored, he can come and build me a greenhouse! LOL.. You lucky girl! We really don't have bad winters here though so I guess I don't really NEED a greenhouse I just WANT one...

Would love to learn more about everyone else. Michelle, Rita, Dot are you out there? Anyone else?

Dianne

Hi: I'm Renee from Fayetteville, NC (home of the 82nd Airborne and the Green Berets). I'm a magistrate and live on a lake. I started growing daylilies simply because I had heard that they were hard to kill (I was no gardener at that time) and because I wanted to fill my back yard with enough flowers so that I would not have to mow any grass(weeds). I am going for the "exploded crayon box" theory of planting. Any gardening ability that I have developed is due to this forum's postings and links! By the way, thanks for the daylily addiction that you have encouraged as well.
Renee

Hi Dianne - check out my website at www.gardenfantasies.com for pics of my work etc! Luckily, my husband has been able to stay here in CA during his whole career, but we did move quite a few times in the last few years and every time up come all my plants with me! I'm looking forward to finding my 'dream property' and planting for good!

-Chris

Hi, My name is Cindy, (This sounds like a counseling session) I love gardening and I love animals. I started out with perennial gardens more than 20 years ago. I went crazy with spring bulbs. (last count was 3,000, not counting the muscari) Then of course I needed something to cover up the dying foliage on the daffodils, so started the daylilies. I'm only up to 123 on the daylilies in the ground right now. I will easily double that with my spring ordering/ garden visits. I've been bitten by the DL bug for sure!!! I'm tilling up my last section of remaining lawn. Now I will just have grass paths. In the summer, I go outside as soon as it is light and I stay out there until I can't see anymore.!!! What a life!!! I have a lake in front of me and a cornfield behind me. Perfect for gardening. I live alone, and have 2 adult children. My daughter is a high school art teacher, my son works in Pittsburgh for US Steel as a computer techie. I'm in Ohio Zone 5. Well, I don't really live alone. I have one inside cat who is a rescue, and I have 3 outside cats ( a mom and two of her grown kittens) that are also rescued. Right now I have 3 more, YIKES, that I am fostering. Leaning towards keeping one, getting homes for the others. Oh that's right, I do have a job, with summers off, and that is perfect in order to tend to my obsessions. I am a school psychologist for a great suburban school district that is an hour away from where I live. I love the school district that I'm in and plan to retire from this district. I don't mind the drive, I've been doing that drive for 17 years now. . Besides, when the weather is bad, we don't have school. Only thing I really like about the snow is snow days!! My sister in law works for a school district also and she is a DL nut, so we enable each other. I also love to read, mostly fiction, and some light sci fi. And one last thing, I am a vegetarian, have been for well over 20 years.
Now I am rambling, which is something else I do.
Cindy

I'm out here girl... but busy with spring clean up and SEEDS!! Got my first two sprouts. You're the one that probably knows most about me on this board! You've been to my place.... and you know besides daylilies, I am into perenials and plant swaping. Other than the garden, there are my two pups... they love thier walks and the little one is taking beginners training, even though she is 8!! :o) Let's see, I make herbal soaps, love wine and FOOD, so we cook alot. Also into cultural arts, so we attend symphony, theater, ballet, museum events etc...

Weldon and I were thinking of doing a spring tour of some of our gardens... AND, are you going/have interest in going to the Regional meeting (Ft. Worth)?

Michelle, yes I would be interested in the Regional in Ft. Worth. Have never been but would love to go. When is it?
Please count me in for the spring garden tour if ya'll decide to do it. Sounds like a lot of fun and I promise I will try not to get lost this time! LOL...

Renee, daylilies are pretty hard to kill. I think I have only lost a couple and one of those was when one of my pomeranians decided to crawl up and take a nap in one of my potted daylilies. He broke off the leaves down to the crown and it never came back. I was not a happy camper.

Nice website Chris. You have some really nice looking plants.

Cindy you sure have a lot of bulbs. I can't even imagine having that many let alone planting all of them! I bet your yard will look beautiful when they all bloom. I bought some bulbs at Sam's this weekend and there may have been 20 in the package and I was wondering when I was going to find time this weekend just to plant them.

Dianne

Here is a link to the AHS Region 6 Meeting. I will probably be working in a friends garden (she is on tour and organizing the show) on Friday, but would be on the bus on Saturday. Bill Maryott will be the guest speaker. Since it is so far away, maybe you could do a sleepover!! Hey, there is something new... daylily sleepovers! :o)

I think I'm on the old list...Wasn't it on the conversations side? I've had some trouble, too, in finding older threads.

I must tease you a bit, Chris...as the wife of a retired Marine...must be nice to have stayed in CA for your husband's whole career!

I took a peek at your website and I'm just curious. That looks like a picture of Water Drops (Stamile 09) on your site. Is that one of the ones you mentioned you've just received? I was curious as the picture on your site looks a lot like the one on Floyd Cove...but, I guess the good news is that it must bloom very true to its picture!

Also, Blue Hippo...I recognized those two because I've admired them myself. I'm thinking the one of a kind daylilies you mention must be seedlings? If the rest of those you have pictured are your seedlings...you've got some wowsers!

I did peek at a few other pages and saw some that I thought I recognized as well...like Larry's Obsession and Jerry Hyatt. You must have quite the collection! I did wonder, though, if folks might be confused that some of these are yours since you say "our daylily hybrids are just breathtaking".

I hesitate to say this....so, please take it as a compliment, but some of your photos on your site do remind me of the hybriders' photos....There's been much discussion about photos and attribution and copyrights, etc.

Daylily photography (okay, garden photography!) is very interesting and exciting to me. I work hard a it, but it's still a work in progress for me; however, I keep plugging away. I'm hoping to secure another lens before the National in May to practice with.

Nice reading about you guys! I wish I could remember what I wrote about before...lol...but things are probably pretty much the same for me. More daylilies and more seedlings...lol...and always the need for more space than I have!

I'm trying hard to get Garden Eight up from last year's Houston National...maybe today...I'll post a link on a separate thread.

Happy growing, everyone....I'm so looking forward to Spring!

Hi, everyone,

I have a job with summers off too, (like Cindy.)
Yes, it's nice to have snow days off, but the down side of that is having to make them up in June. I'm an Elementary Instrumental Music Teacher specializing in stringed instruments. I travel between six schools/week and hold several concerts each year for the families of 4th and 5th grade orchestra students.

The busiest times of the year are September and May/June, both in my "day" job, and during the gardening season! I manage to get all my planting accomplished at the proper time, but those darn weeds and edging projects often get put on the back burner.

Hope to retire in June of 2010, but that's not written in concrete. Depending on the state of the economy, I may teach longer.

What an interesting bunch of hemeroholics we have here!
I sure do enjoy reading about all of your backgrounds.

Julie

Hello, my name is David Burris. Other than our daylily nursery, here are some other things about me.. I used to fish on the B.A.S.S., and Red Man Tournament trail(Now FLW)years ago. I'm an avid bowhunter,sportsman, and conservationist. I have 3 boys...20,15,14. I work full time at our hospital as well. I have a cousin who drives Nascar (Mark Martin). Mark and my Dad are actually first cousins, so I'm a second cousin. I'm developing a real passion for our Bluebirds here on our farm and we annually have an average of around 40-50 nesting pairs that raise many MANY babies. I use to draw and paint some when I was younger and I'm kind of rediscovering that in the last few years...One thing I have noticed is that hardly anyone does daylily portraits, other than a few I have seen that are copied from photos...So that is an interest to capture daylilies and wildlife(especially Bluebirds) together on paper and canvas. We have Sicillian minature donkeys, pygmy and angora goats, many different exotic chickens and Mango our cat, in which my intro H. "Mango Kitty" was named for. We are going to add 3 acres or so of Blueberries,Blackberries,Raspberries,Currants, Gooseberries,Strawberries and some other oddball fruits and berries over the next few years. I have an orchard of cherries,apples,pears,peaches, and plums. We are currently adding a new pond as well. I'm 42 years old but hope to retire from my "regular" job in a few more years and pursue gardening more and more. Well that's it for my condensed life story..LOL.

YES I am a daylilly freak!!!
Hi I'm Colette(COc0) from Mendocino Co California--I own a small ranch on the NORTHERN CA. Coast--between ft.Bragg and Westport-
I have great gardening weather here---we can do dormants and Evegreens.

I'm a partner in a P.R. firm, We work for NASCAR---(TG DAYTONA is over)
I have been envolved with the sport of pure breed dogs for over 40 years.
My Breed is French bulldogs and my prefex is LEFOX. I show and breed for myself. I also Judge a few BREEDs --THAT REALLY HARD WORK!!!
I enjoying the dogs but since I have found DL it's been MADDNESS!!!!
Dogs are great but the daylilys don't POOP!!!------or bark! (JUSTKIDDING)
--the DL are wonderful there is something for everyone.
If you want to show ,breed and enjoy!!!
Greetings to all of you on the list---I don't always have a chance to post but I keep up with our forum.
This is always a great place to be!!
bestblooms to all.

cole,frenchies and daylilys

I am probably on the old thread but I thought would post here as well: alot has happened since then anyway. I went back to school for job training and with a bit of luck I will be working at a wastewater treatment plant in June. My wife is a bit tired of being the sole income. Once we have two incomes again I can resume buying expensive daylilies. My wife and I are 40 and seriously looking into adoption. We have no kids of our own but we do have three cats. We live a half hour to the ocean or the woods and love being outdoors.

Edward

I'm the President of the local daylily club. I've been active with daylilies for about 30 years. It was around 1997 that Mare Miller invited me to write to Spike, along with several others, to get this daylily forum started and I have participated on it since then.

You can see some personal information on my "bio" page. In addition to daylilies my wife and I started breeding bengal cats. Right now we have 6 litters with 33 kittens so it is a full time job.

I have also been active on the AHS National level serving on the board of directors for 6 years chairing the Popularity Poll, then Policy and Procedures, and the last three years as the chair for AHS Registrations.

We live in San Diego, where I have about 900 daylily cultivars along with Palms, cycads, bamboo, succulents camelia and more. If I weren't so committed to daylilies I would also be in the Palm and Bamboo Societies.

Hello, all!
So much has changed for me in the last year, that any posting I made then would be way out of date now. What hasn't changed is my daylily obsession. I also collect hostas, peonies, iris, daffodils, roses, and lots of woodies. Last June we moved to a property we bought in 2006. I took 2 years to move my plants and establish flower beds at the new place which is just 3 miles from the old place. We have 10 acres of fabulous, fertile, never-tilled soil, big ponds, large trees on the perimeter.
Last year, my three daughters finished school and moved away, so I lost my gardening helpers. I really miss them. I pulled so many weeds last year that I ended up getting carpal tunnel release surgery in both hands to fix the nerve damage. I think this year I'll back off from my organic stance and use Preen, or maybe use tools instead of my hands! My husband travels several months a year, so I get to travel also. I shop for plants all over the country, and really enjoy touring gardens and attending conventions.
I'm a garden and exhibition judge. For twenty years, I taught secondary school, but I've never stopped going to school myself! Currently I'm in school studying to be a captioner. The captioners I've talked to HATE captioning gardening shows with technical terms and government meetings, and those are the ones I love the most, so maybe I'll find work in that field.
Enought about me...NEXT!
Cindi

Seldom a poster here but often a lurker, especially in the winter months when I need to see what pictures everyone is posting.

Until the beginning of this year I served as the President of the East Tennessee Daylily Society for the last two years. Maurice Greene took over that position this year. I served as V.P and show chair for a couple of years before that for the club. Of all the positions Ive held with the club, Show Chair seems to be the one that was the most interesting/labor intensive, but fun.

Starting last year my wife Rebecca and I started the process of taking over the general sales division of Jeff and Jackie Pryors garden. We just finished off getting our seeds started today and kicked the lights on. Hopefully in a week or so we'll see a sea of green sprouting up.

Like Gary, Ive got several Palms as well as many other tropicals on our property. Unlike Gary, we live in Knoxville which is on the cusp of zone 7a/6b. We have gotten a lot of interested neighbors stopping by for a look over the last few years.

Doug

Here is a link that might be useful: Southern Skies Gardens

Gonegardening: Hi! Thanks so much for checking out my website. Actually, my husband is not retired - rather reserves/NAVY. And Yes - Those are all the latest intros you're seeing on my site! I just got in Water Drops from the Stamiles and my other hybridizer's intros will be blooming for the first time this season. I will also be adding my very first "Seedlings/Future Intro" page to the site in a month or so with hopefully my own Intros - which will reprsent my "One of a kind daylilies........" that you are reading about. I've got about 450 2009 seedlings growing this year also - some are on the LA...

I'm working on my photography also! Would love to share info on that with you- I'm going to look into lenses also as well as watermarking my own photos.

-Chris in CA

Hi everyone! I'm Michelle. I live in NC near the stateline of SC. We're just on the line of zones 7a/7b in the foothills. I've had a few daylilies for several years, but just caught the bug about 4 years ago. We now have close to 600. We live in a very small community on 38 acres, most of it being pasture and wooded. I have 3 children and 2 bonus (step) children. My 9 yo son has autism and I've been a stay at home mom since he was about a year old. DH works long hours usually leaving home around 6:30 am and getting back around 8pm. Gardening is my getaway. My oldest daughter, Alyson, is becoming more interested in daylilies. She likes the doubles. So maybe this year I will have a little more help outside although I doubt if she will pull many weeds. lol I have always collected something - dishes, Fenton glass, antique furniture, quilts, etc. I used to be very crafty but sort of lost interest (or time). Love to read during the winter. I'm just finishing the Nicholas Sparks' novels. I also love interior decorating. Always changing and doing something new inside and outside of the house. We have 1 spoiled rotten cocker spaniel named Baylee who stays inside most of the time. And we have 5 cats who live outdoors.

Hi, My name is Vickie and I live in southern Indiana with my husband of 32 years. We only have about 1/2 acre in a small town so if I fill it up with too many daylilies, there will be nothing for him to mow. Therefore, I only have about 100 daylilies (but still buying more)! I have room for a few more.

We raised our three wonderful children and are empty nesters for the most part except for our son who comes home from college for the summers.

I like to do counted cross-stitching and reading. One of my favorite authors is John Grisham. Also have been bitten by the digital photography bug and just purchased my first adapter and filters which will be used on my Canon S5 to shoot some great pics of my daylilies. The sun can really wash out those colors and I'm hoping the filters will curtail that.

Just joined the forum yesterday and am looking forward to learning a lot. I need to learn how to post a picture that is not too big or too small. I haven't figured that out yet.

Hi,
I'm an English teacher teaching 6th-12th ESL classes for 7years in okc, and then one year in Afghanistan last year, now I'm back in Oklahoma subbing and searching out my next job opportunity. also enjoying the chance this spring to get my hands in the dirt again and looking forward to everything in my yard this season. i recently joined the OHS here in okc which has been interesting and fun. I also volunteer at the National Memorial Museum. I like to travel, spend time with family, and otherwise, just boring stuff like working out at the gym, movies books etc..
I play piano, and sometimes while working out in the yard during the summer I'll come in play for a while to cool off, then get up and go back outside to find more to do in the yard. ha
nice post, was fun to read who people are.
dean