Farmer lilies on parade!

Long time readers of Roundtop Ruminations know that I love farmer lilies, and this year is an especially good year for them. They line the two-lane rural roads, often in groups of several hundred blooms. Travel another 100 feet and there’s another group of them that’s just as large, perhaps this time on the opposite side of the road. I easily pass thousands of them every day. I enjoy them no less because they are so common. Those huge, intense blooms are simply show-stoppers.

Yesterday was another day at adventure camp for me. We managed to get all the sessions in, though the last one was shortened a bit by an impending storm. The kids caught two green frogs, a minnow nearly large enough to qualify as a fish, a long-tailed salamander, water striders, assorted bugs - mostly helgramites - and the usual couple dozen crayfish that ranged in size from nearly microscopic to big enough to eat (we didn’t). The kids enjoy themselves and the activity and that’s what’s important.

That said, I was surprised by the low level of water in the little creek. True, it’s been a bit dry, but Roundtop has had its share of thunderstorms over the past few weeks that drop a quick inch or even two onto the ground. Right now the creek is as low as I would expect to be in August. I had another 1.5 inches of rain yesterday. I hope that helped. If not, the stream is going to be looking really bad when August actually does get here.

A little gratuitous beauty

Farmer lily

Roundtop Mountain’s early-season mini-heat wave is past its prime, if not quite done with and out the door this morning. For that alone I am in a celebratory mood, so it’s a good time to post a photo of a bit of nature’s gratuitous beauty. This cloudy morning the farmer lilies are blooming. Some were still closed up after the night but most were open and ready for their close-up. I could not disappoint them.


Like black raspberries and new fawns, late June is also marked by farmer lilies. They line the roads leading up the mountain as thickly as crowds at a New Year’s Day parade. They are 6-10 blooms deep in the ditches and often run on for the length of a football field. If you can’t count at least 100 blooms while standing in one spot, you must be inside. With the curtains drawn.

It’s not only the farmer lilies that are appearing on the mountain either. Other midsummer blooms, like chicory, are also starting to add some color to the summer green. I haven’t yet seen any brown-eyed susans but they can’t be far from showing up either.

The Canada geese babies now resemble their parents and no longer look like featherless chickens. They still can’t fly, and the parent geese still shepherd them everywhere, but already they look a lot more like adults than goslings.

Fawns are beginning to appear on the mountain, too. They’ve been born for a little while now, but are only just starting to be big enough to accompany mama on her daily rounds. Many are still hidden, curled up during the day while mother grazes on the ski slopes.

Officially, summer has only just begun but here it looks and feels like midsummer. To me, the July 4 holiday has always marked the “middle” of summer—six weeks after Memorial Day (the unofficial start of summer) and just nine weeks before Labor Day (the unofficial end of summer). I suppose that thinking is left over from my school days when Memorial Day and Labor Day pretty much bracketed the end of one year and the start of a new term. So whatever the calendar says, my thinking has its own version of summer.

Almost!

Farmer lilies

It’s no secret to readers of Roundtop Ruminations that the wild and showy farmer lilies are one of my favorite flowers. And I am happy to report that they are almost ready to pop. The morning as I was leaving the mountain I checked a favorite spot to see how they were coming along. They are almost out. In fact, I expect they will be out by evening.

Farmer lilies love the sun, closing up at night and then opening spectacularly each morning. If it’s not sunny they will not deign to open their flowers and will stay closed until the sun strikes them again.

I am also happy to report that my half-grown chickens have figured out how to navigate the ramp up to and into their chicken house. After only a few days, they’ve already perfected the routine. At dusk they all troop up the ramp, one after another, to reach the safe and dry, straw-ladened roost. After they are all in, I close the door behind them, which keeps them out of sight of possible predators. In winter the closed door will keep them warmer, too. The little girls are growing up!

Farmer lily fix below!

You didn’t really expect me to go through June without posting a few photos of farmer lilies, did you?

I didn’t think so.

Long time readers of Roundtop Ruminations know I have a fondness and a weakness for this most showy of the wildflowers. This year the blooms seem particularly profuse. Some roads are so thick with them that it looks as though some manic ladies garden club has been beautifying everything in sight. Don’t think that is a complaint. It’s not. I adore these flowers.

Long time readers also have a list of other common names for these flowers that is nearly as long as my arm.  Ditch lily is perhaps the most accurate of the names I remember, though that also feels just a tad perjorative to me.  That term certainly doesn't capture any of the beauty of the flower.  Farmer lily expresses some measure of times-gone-by, old time romance to it, at least to me. So that's the name I stick with.

Last evening I passed this clump of them and had to turn the car around and stop to take the photos in the late afternoon sun.  The flowers close up as soon as the sun leaves them in shade, and I knew they wouldn't be open again by the time I left the mountain in the morning. 

I just can't resist farmer lilies.

From tiny sprouts...

Farmer lilies (as these are called locally) are particularly profuse this year, or so it seems to me. I can’t travel 100 yards down any road without finding a clump of 50-100 bright orange blooms. So many wildflowers are small and delicate. Not so with farmer lilies. Large, robust and spectacular are words better suited for these beauties. I can’t get enough of them!

I should also report that my first session of Adventure Camp went well last week. We were hardly properly started down the trail before a small garter snake was caught and held by about a dozen 9-year-olds. When we were done and turned the 10-inch snake loose, it disappeared instantly. I have never seen a snake vanish so completely and so quickly, never to be seen by another group all day. That little thing was getting the heck out of Dodge!

The other groups found toads and frogs, ate the first of the still-ripening black raspberries, tasted sassafras and looked for interesting fungus and ferns. They all seemed to enjoy the walk and the things we found in the woods. That’s pretty much all I have time for on our little treks. I want them to experience the woods and have fun, hoping that is enough to make them want to return to a forest on some other day and explore whatever they see. It’s only a small seed I try to plant, but I hope at least a few of them will take hold and sprout.

Farmer lilies

Even if I would still be blogging 30 years from now, I can’t imagine that I will let a year pass without posting a photo of farmer lilies. When they are in full bloom, as they are here now, lilies are simply gorgeous.

One of the many things I like about them is the surprise of them. I may drive along a road for a few miles and the road edges are green with grass and assorted other things. Then all of a sudden I’ll round a small curve and there they are—an entire bank of farmer lilies. It’s rare to find just one or two of them. Twenty to 50 blooms are more common, tightly grouped together like members of an audience. Sometimes there are hundreds of blooms. I never know where they will show up but when they do it’s spectacular.

They all turn to face the sun, basking in it, burning bright with the light. These are no hothouse flowers that must be coaxed and coddled. Farmer lilies are strong and hardy and in their own way every bit as showy as a rose.

They ask only for sun and a bit of moistness. Once they find a spot they like, they gladly spread and grow more numerous by the year. I can’t imagine that I will ever grow tired of them. To me, growing tired of farmer lilies would be akin to growing tired of life and beauty. I can't see that happening, not now and not in 30 years, or in 100.

You Were Warned

Readers were warned last week that I like to take photos of farmer lilies and that you were likely to see more on this page. So you shouldn't be surprised by today's photo.

That said, the real reason you're seeing this photo today is that the weather hasn't yet cleared after storms ovenight, so getting an interesting photo this morning wasn't possible.

I was lucky last night. The storms were neither intense nor long-lasting. The rain was odd, though. Last night my Maine Coon cat Ben (who should be named Total Destruction) had to go to the vet's for a routine shot. Naturally, just as it was time to leave, the skies opened up in a torrent of rain. The rain held off until I opened the cabin door to leave. By the time I reached the car door just 10 steps from the cabin, I was soaked and carrying a very unhappy cat. By the time I'd driven to the bottom of the lane, about 1/8 of a mile, there were puddles. By the time I was out the gates and starting up the hill, water was streaming down the road and the gullies were nearly full. I almost pulled off the road as I could barely see to drive.

But I kept going, and in another half mile the sky looked a bit brighter. The vet's is just a 10 minute drive away, on the other side of the mountain. And as soon as I got to the other side of the mountain, the road was dry. They hadn't had a drop of rain. I arrived soaked to the skin. As the crows fly, the vet's office is about 2 miles from the cabin. And in that short distance the difference was no rain versus hoping I still had Noah on speed dial and that the ark hadn't left yet.

When I got back to the cabin just 20 minutes later the cloudburst was over. I'd had just under three-quarters of an inch of rain in about 10 minutes or so. Weird, huh?

Farmer Lilies in Bloom!

In this area, these flowers are called farmer lilies. Apparently, nearly everywhere else they are called tiger lilies and apparently also “ditch” lilies, which certainly is a good, if not elegant, description of where they like to grow. This variety is a native plant and is both hardy and perennial. It grows happily in wetter areas (like ditches) and seems to prefer poor soil. The plant has few if any insect or disease problems, though snails and slugs can damage it.

The roots were eaten by native Americans for medicinal use, mostly for nausea apparently. There is also a non-native cultivated flower with the same name that grows from bulbs. This native version is tuberous and can simply be divided and planted where you want them.

I’m assuming the local name of farmer lilies came because this was a plant preferred by farm wives, who likely had little extra cash to buy flowers but soon learned that this plant could be dug up from the local cow pasture and planted in front of the farmhouse. The plants are certainly the showiest of the local wildflowers. It isn’t uncommon to see them lining the edge of a roadside for half a mile or more, hundreds of flowers in bloom at once. It doesn’t get any showier than that!

The flowers bloom for weeks, closing up each night and opening again in the morning sun. I find them all over the place, even on the mountain at Roundtop. I find them along roads and paths, at the edges of the slopes, all over the place but I never get tired of seeing them. Or photographing them, so let's just say I'm giving my readers fair warning that this won't be the last photo of them you are likely to see this summer.