Dreaming of Daylilies

 
As summer draws to a close, memories linger of the magnificent meals prepared with fresh gifts from the garden. A summer full of flowers made the meals beautiful to look at as well as delicious and nourishing.

Tender lettuces of early summer made wonderful salads that were decorated with deep purple Johnny-jump-ups. The cultivated pansies came along to garnish spring rolls – their brilliant yellows and deep blues gave a lovely hue through the translucent rice paper. Zucchini flowers were stuffed with sunflower seed pâté, chicory flowers were sprinkled over fresh summer tomatoes, and borage flowers decorated the breakfast bowls of yoghurt and strawberries.

My favourite flower of summer, and the one we ate nearly every day from the middle of July through the middle of August, is the lovely daylily. Who says you can’t have your flowers and eat them too? Daylilies are the most delightful of edible summer flowers because no matter how many you pick to eat one day, there will be an abundance of new flowers just as big and beautiful as the day before. This is why they are called daylilies – each flower only blooms for a day, then fades away.

The only problem I have with daylilies is that the season is far too short. As the last few flowers bloomed on August 20th, I felt the end of summer rushing in. Oh sure, we still have borage, chicory, Johnny-jump-ups and other pansies for keeping flowers in the menu. An abundance of squash flowers are still around for stuffing. The marigolds look pretty in the salads. We will be dining on delicious daisy leaves and sprinkles of the flower petals for another month or more.

Still, I already miss the daylilies. I stuffed the big orange flowers, used them in place of lettuce on sandwiches, sprinkled the petals and sepals on top of salads, decorated bowls of dip, put the wilted flowers in soup. Sometimes I simply picked a couple dozen flowers and put them on the lunch table in a shallow bowl of water so everyone could use them however they liked.

The variety we grow is the common orange flower. It is hardy in our poor soil, and the patch manages to get a little bit bigger each year. A friend gave us a pretty yellow variety a few years ago that blooms lightly in June. Last fall we got a clump of roots of a small yellow daylily that we hope will bloom in September, once we get it established.

Allan was visiting a friend in early July, and noticed a large blooming of deep red-orange daylilies in his yard. He brought some rootstalk home, so we can hope for some of these next summer. Daylily roots tend to grow in tight bundles. It does them good to take a clump out of the middle now and then, to give them more room to grow.

Last summer I learned that there are dozens of varieties of daylilies in a rainbow of colours. Their blooming cycle could begin as early as June, and last well into October. I want them all!

 
So, I’m making a plea to gardeners everywhere to help me find more daylilies for my garden. Do you have a clump you’d care to share? Drop a line to me at vikimather@yahoo.com or RR 1, Wahnapitae, ON P0M 3C0. I can trade if you’d like the common orange variety – and I’ll share my favourite flower stuffing recipes.
 
Viki Mather is owner of Kukagami Lodge, a northern Ontario wilderness resort at the southern boundary of the Temagami forest. Web: www.kukagamilodge.com, email: lodge@kukagami.infosathse.com

Viki has lived in the wilderness for 26 years, without electricity or running water. Read these columns monthly to discover wonderful ways to live in harmony with nature, bring edible wilds into your kitchen, thrive without plugging into the grid, and enjoy a healthier life.