I was running out of room in our home, so I decided to put as many as I could in our office until I could figure out better locations for them all. The office smelled intoxicating and yes, I am still cleaning up orange pollen.
I have titled this the great lily harvest (of 2016) because that’s exactly what it was. The weather was really nuts at the beginning of the year and my lilies were effected. It was too warm too early, so they started emerging too soon and then we were hit with a hard frost, then nonstop rain for a month followed by intense heat so by July, my lilies had grown too tall too fast and because of that, many were not strong enough to hold up their large heads.
Not only that, but because some of their leaves were contorted and odd due to the early frost, I really had no idea how they would bloom, but luckily they remained gorgeous. The only issue as stated above was many of them were falling over, so I had to trim a good portion of them. It was depressing because I love to see them boasting against the sun (you can see an example of that from last year here) but not as depressing if they didn’t bloom at all…so I’m good.
Though I do realize the extent of my hermit ways when my entire house is full of lilies and I really don’t know anyone well enough locally to give them too. I even considered trying to get a booth at the local farmers market to sell some of them, but I needed more time to figure that whole thing out. Ah well, the house smells wonderful and my only complaint is that staying ahead of all that orange pollen has left my hands permanently stained.
My attempt to get a glorious harvesting shot…but it kind of turned out looking like a big lily mess. It was too hot people too hot.