June 24, 2011---butterfly weed, daylily, love-in-a-mist

I'm using this post as a reminder to myself that I like butterfly weed with red daylilies and blue love-in-a-mist. I'd already pulled off the love-in-a-mist/butterfly weed combination in the garden (letting love-in-a-mist seedlings grow up around butterfly weed), but today was the first day I noticed the orange butterfly weed/ red daylily combination and liked it. Actually, this is more complicated than it sounds, because although the three flowers are now blooming together (in time, not geograpy) in the garden, this is the second blooming of butterfly weed (I cut it back after first blooming around Memorial Day, to get this second flush), and most of my love-in-a-mist has stopped blooming and gone to seed. Only a few blue-blooming plants remain. Still, if I keep cutting back my butterfly weed to get secondary bloom, it will reliably bloom (second flush) with the red daylilies, and I want to make sure I keep them in proximity to each other. Of course, the way to pull this combo off more easily is to create it in the vase, not the ground! There are also some river oats and a wood poppy leaf in this arrangement.

In real life, this daylily is redder than it looks in photo. Here it looks like the regular, roadside daylily, which isn't as dramatic with butterfly weed as this redder variety.