Bettylen Daylily, home

The hot weather is settling in for the duration, and it'll be a lake day later. For now, however, I'm enjoying the rapidly warming outdoors and our abundance of rain-responsive flowers in the garden and the wild.  The daylilies are coming on like gangbusters, and I spent a good part of the morning photographing them from every possible angle, as well as documenting all of the insect visitors. For reasons I can't fathom, this prize Hemerocallis, which we got at last year's bargain sale at White Flower Farm, was something less than a pollinator magnet. Sooner or later, however, Bettylen, as this cultivar is known in the trade, will bring in the bees, butterflies, beetles, and flower flies. In a wonderful illusion that I didn't see until I edited the photo, it appears that I'm not the only observer. If this were true, it would hardly be a surprise. Bettylen certainly draws a crowd, with, as the WFF catalog explains, "deep purple petals" on a "lightly fragrant daylily" that is "almost four inches wide and artfully finished with frilly white hems and bright green throats." Couldn't have said it better.