Daylilies - Peak Bloom

This is the time of year when the garden goes from green with a few splashes of color, to color everywhere. Dayliliy season is at its peak. This photo is taken the top of the hill to the west of the gardens. Where I was standing is about 200 feet above the barn (rusting roof in the picture), though it is hard to tell in the picture. The daylily beds continue off the the left for quite awhile, but it is impossible to get them all in the same shot, and no photograph will do justice to the riot of color present. It's one of those things where you just have to be there. And no matter how much I like this view, my day always includes a walk through all of the daylilies sometime during the day to take pictures and just enjoy them. I don't rush and it usually takes me about an hour. On sunny days I walk early in the morning before the heat and sun fade the flowers. On cool or cloudy days I often wait until late afternoon when I don't feel the press of other things to do and can truly take my time and just enjoy the garden.
In addition to taking pictures, I usually carry a large, flat bottomed basket into which I put daylily blossoms. One of the nice things about daylilies is that their bloom last one day whether they are on the plant or off, so I pick just the blooms and leave the scapes with the buds remain on the plants. The blooms then get put on my kitchen windowsill where I can enjoy them when I am cooking and washing dishes - or if I get carried away and pick too many, they might find their way to almost any place I can enjoy them for the day. A note if you do this - be sure to add them to the compost pile in the evening before you head off to bed, because no matter how good they still look and how hard it is to trash what look like perfectly good flowers, by morning they will be no more than limp puddles of used-to-be flowers and will be just a mess to clean up. Better to remember them in all of their beauty and to wake up to dead, mushy blooms.
Jane