1808 Daylilies

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Yesterday I went to Poughkeepsie with my trowel, shovel, and garden fork (not sure that's the right name - it's like a pitchfork, but with a shorter handle and stronger tines), to dig up some daylilies.

I'd had an email response to my request on Ecycle. The woman said she wanted them out so she could plant a shrub in that spot, so I should take them all. She gave me her address, a description of the house, and the location of the daylily bed. She said she'd be at work every day, but I could come and get them any time.

On the drive there, I got a little worried. What if this email was actually from someone else, as a joke or retaliation, and the owner would come home from work and find a hole where her beloved lilies had been? So I tried knocking on neighbors' doors, but no one was home.

I started digging. I half expected a police car to pull up and a cop to ask me what I was doing.

It was a lot easier than I thought it would be. I just pushed the fork in, and the whole mass levered up. I had been a bit disappointed that the patch was only about 22 by 18 inches, but it was very dense, and when I separated the plants, I ended up with well over 100 sets. Wow! Given the price the local nursery is asking for potted lilies, that's more than $600 dollars worth!

I spent the late afternoon planting them on my bank/cliff. That was WORK! Much of the bank is a shale-like rock. I know there's some soil there, because there are weeds (that's why I wanted the lilies, eventually they'll choke out the weeds) but much of that soil is shale. I had to dig about 200 holes before I found enough good spots for lily sets. When I finished I was drained.

I was standing there holding a trowel and the plastic garbage bag the sets had been in, admiring the plants, when a police car pulled up and a cop asked me what I was doing. "Everything ok?" Local guy. I've bought him coffee in the diner. He was just passing. He probably wonders why I found his question funny.

I felt like I'd pulled off the perfect "bank" robbery, having just buried the swag.
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