Let me start by saying that I can’t stand daylilies. My mom had them in a hardscrabble little bed in front of the porch for years, and one of my garden chores used to be deadheading the daylilies. They’re really boring flowers; there’s no scent and they’re ridiculously hardy, so they can’t be killed off by anything short of a mini-Ice Age. They grow, they bloom, the flowers die, they keep growing and blooming. Meh.
So when I moved to Illinois from Seattle, one of the things I noticed was that daylilies were everywhere. They’re very, very common in what I’d describe as “Industrial Park Moderne” landscaping, probably because they’re both soulless and cheap. For these reasons, they lend themselves very well to being planted in rigorously laid out lines and bunches in parkways leading to glass boxes housing medium-size companies you’ve never heard of. Also, because of the cheapness factor, they’re popular with developers, because all you have to do is stick ’em in the ground and they’ll grow – it doesn’t matter how bad the soil is, they’ll grow.
And what we have here, in my personal corner of Illinois, is very bad soil. If you manage to dig down below the 4 to 6 inches of “topsoil” to the real soil below, you hit a layer of dark yellow clay that is completely impervious to water (and if you’re lucky, you’ll have patches of degraded yellowish limestone chips, which are probably glacial remnants). I once tried to dig a hole in the front bed (there are two rectilinear beds in front along the edge of the walk to the front door). I was all excited, because it was my first year in the house, and I blew $125 on a Carol Mackie daphne that was supposed to be hardy for the area.
Poor thing, I stuck it in the worst possible place, where it was exposed to wind, cold, and de-icing chemicals, no wonder it died. However, the fact that it took me an hour’s heavy labor just to dig the hole for it should have made me stop and think. I was digging in stuff that, dry, has the consistency of moldering concrete. Wet, or somewhat damp, it’s pretty much like the green stuff you bought in sticks the size and shape of butter and worked with your hands until you could roll it into a snakelike shape and coil it into a pot.
So the builders or the former owners or someone who’ll pay for their crimes in the afterlife someday put in daylilies in three different beds – one long straight one against the back fence (the yard is partially fenced), one long straight one along the side of the garage, and one little round one placed at random at the northeast corner of the slab patio.
Well, the little round one is now a little bigger and has no daylilies in it, and it’s got most of a bag of compost and all of a bag of topsoil in it. Plus the little raised bed the former owners left has been turned over a couple of times and it has a layer of compost on it too. The herbs I put in 2 years ago gradually died off (although I’m pretty sure the dill will come back, like a bad penny. I’m not sure what I’ll put in there, but something is going in this year. Not sure what. It’s sort of set up for vegetables.
I’d like to start some more herbs in pots again – I neglected them a bit (not much) over the summer, but the killer was the long trip in September. But they were nice to have while I had them, and the first year, I made really good herb oil. And this time, I’d like to get some decent basil for a change, because I love using it on pasta.
Tomorrow, if there’s time, I’d like to start digging the daylilies out of… one of the two other beds. The urgent one is probably the back-fence one. Echhh.
