Four days ago, I woke up to this wintery scene. These are always welcome here, up north, as the snow is the perfect insulator for the daylilies. It maintains them at a nice 29 degrees and helps prevent frequent heaving of the plants due to thawing. 

Luckily we do not see as much of this freeze thaw cycle in Zone 5b. Further south, I hear more hybridizers moaning :)  But my joy over a nice 6-8 inch snow cover was short lived.    

Two days later temperatures bounded up to 50 degrees with 2 inches of warm rain overnight... and this is what we see now.

Voila... the grass is even still green... :)  I let my daylilies to go to sleep " Au Natural" in the fall.  

After bad experiences cutting green scapes I decided to let mother nature " do her thing".  There are pros and cons about garden tidying up .. but somehow I simply cannot fault mother nature.  The foliage stays on as long as it survives...and then settles down to mulch the crowns.  We mulch all first year plantings and seedlings with a high quality, fine fir bark mulch to protect the crowns.  Once they get through heir first winter, they are on their own.

Since I experiment a lot with southern cultivars.... I am taking a risk that I hope will help others make decisions about what they would like to try for themselves. I am finding a  huge degree of adaptabilty in the daylily.  Dormants, semi-evergreens and evergreens all live here.  The risks I have taken have netted me some stunning seedlings.

I hope to share stories of successes ( as well as failures) with you in my blogs.

Again I invite any questions ...

Spring...... is on it's way!!
Claudia