Good old K Gardens!  They set up at the Fulton Street Market and today they had dozens of pink day lilies.  I bought six different varieties and already have them stationed in the lily bed.  I’ll plant them this afternoon.

But July is day lily bloom time, and I love it.   Below is strawberry candy, which is planted in the front.  It’s actually not my favorite.  I thought it would be pinker than it is.  But it’s peachy bordering on orange. This picture here makes them look pinker, too.

strawberry candy day lily

My favorite day lily is one that I don’t have a name for.  I bought it a number of years ago from a woman in Byron Center who owns a day lily farm, of all things.  The leaves are quite broad, and as you can see, the flower is very dark.  In fact, I’ve never seen a day lily that is this deep.

Again, this image doesn’t quite capture the deep wine color.

It’s a cool and cloudy day, especially for the middle of July.  I learned a couple days ago from an astromony professor that we are experiencing an unsually cool summer because the sun is not creating many sun spots. Last year was the “bottom” of an eleven year cycle.  This should be the beginning of a new sun spot cycle, but so far, there have been remarkably few sun spots.  So, our weather is quite cool.  No one understands why we have fewer sunspots.  But in the 1800’s there was an extended period when there were few sunspots and that impacted the temperatures world-wide.  In Holland, for example, the canals froze over during the winter.  This apparently is a rarity.