Rescued

The Lizard was helping me in the garden recently when he accidentally brushed up against one of our day lilies, the Wild Horses variety. This particular bulb has never been Superflower the way most day lilies proliferate. While some of the bulbs I bought the same year have since more than quadrupled in size, I'm usually lucky to get three or four blooms from Wild Horses each August. A couple of years, it didn't bloom at all. It's slender, stingy and finicky.

So I jumped to the rescue when the final bloom of 2015 was accidentally knocked to the ground. About two inches in length, it looked as if it needed another week of growing to open. I put it upright in a small container of stagnant water I keep in the house for the houseplants. The chlorine evaporates from the water as it sits for a few days, and I've found this sometimes murky water to be much more palatable to my plants.


I didn't know if the bloom would open. All I could do was hope. The next day, one petal had peeled away. Over the next few days, the decapitated bud looked as if it might open fully.


About eight days later, success! My final Wild Horse of the year opened! Day lilies last only a day, so it was gone by the time I got home from work, but I got to enjoy it in the morning before work, even though the bud fell to an early near-death!

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