(Spindazzle daylily)
an eden of daylilies
Sometimes the newspaper needs art. Photojournalists get to go look for, and capture art from everyday life. We do a lot of searching for something we hope is as cool to other people as it is to us. Sometimes the urge to keep going for the "big picture" overrules the little voice that says "Stop!" for a bit of ambiance, but on one recent day I stopped.
I was cruising Suncook Valley Road in Chichester, looking for "something interesting," as photographers are wont to say, when a bit of yellow and a straw hat beckoned from an intersecting road. I drove by twice but turned around both times and eventually made it over.
I was greeted warmly by a man in his 70s, smiling as though it wasn't odd at all that I'd come nosing about uninvited.
Sometimes the newspaper needs art. Photojournalists get to go look for, and capture art from everyday life. We do a lot of searching for something we hope is as cool to other people as it is to us. Sometimes the urge to keep going for the "big picture" overrules the little voice that says "Stop!" for a bit of ambiance, but on one recent day I stopped.
I was cruising Suncook Valley Road in Chichester, looking for "something interesting," as photographers are wont to say, when a bit of yellow and a straw hat beckoned from an intersecting road. I drove by twice but turned around both times and eventually made it over.
I was greeted warmly by a man in his 70s, smiling as though it wasn't odd at all that I'd come nosing about uninvited.
His name is Gene Smith. He and his wife, Nancy, own Aradeena Gardens, a bower of perennials and more than 1,100 daylilies. Yeah, read that number aloud: more than 1,100 daylilies. Eleven. Hundred. Daylilies.
I didn't even realize there were that many kinds of flowers, let alone strains of what I thought was just one type of flower. (You know, "flower" strikes me as one of those words that doesn't do its namesake justice. Aren't they much lovelier to see than to hear the flat word, "flower?")
(a Summer Wine daylily)
When I asked if I could stay and photograph as he worked, Gene said he didn't mind at all. I framed and snapped the shutter button, framed again. Commented on how very many there were. Gene laughed.
"This is nothing. There's a different kind of lily every 18 inches," he said. "You haven't seen out back. It's much more beautiful there."
We crossed the yard in front of the house, through a pair of trees, and I looked down into a valley of color. Voluptuous, riotous color. Petals flashing canary yellow, titian orange, violent purple, scarlet bleeding into saffron, whites so soft they seemed to spill moonlight.
Was it Eden?
'we need more room!'
I've always felt flowers weren't for me, being an absent-minded sort without much patience to tend a plant, but the crop of such care and perseverance was glorious. Aradeena is extraordinary.
The Smiths have been cultivating and expanding their floral empire for about 10 years. Nancy, who has been a gardener all her life, said Gene took notice one day of a daylily among other perennials. A few days later she came home to find him in a pile of dirt. When she asked him what was happening, he replied, "We need more room for that one!" and pointed to the daylily plant.
When I asked if I could stay and photograph as he worked, Gene said he didn't mind at all. I framed and snapped the shutter button, framed again. Commented on how very many there were. Gene laughed.
"This is nothing. There's a different kind of lily every 18 inches," he said. "You haven't seen out back. It's much more beautiful there."
We crossed the yard in front of the house, through a pair of trees, and I looked down into a valley of color. Voluptuous, riotous color. Petals flashing canary yellow, titian orange, violent purple, scarlet bleeding into saffron, whites so soft they seemed to spill moonlight.
Was it Eden?
'we need more room!'
I've always felt flowers weren't for me, being an absent-minded sort without much patience to tend a plant, but the crop of such care and perseverance was glorious. Aradeena is extraordinary.
The Smiths have been cultivating and expanding their floral empire for about 10 years. Nancy, who has been a gardener all her life, said Gene took notice one day of a daylily among other perennials. A few days later she came home to find him in a pile of dirt. When she asked him what was happening, he replied, "We need more room for that one!" and pointed to the daylily plant.
(a Lil Peanut daylily)
Gene said his passion for daylilies began in earnest when he retired about four years ago. He wanted to buy daylilies that most people have never seen, the ones too expensive to splurge for.
"I have some that cost $100 a lily. I don't care if I sell them." he explained. "I just love the flowers and wish other people could enjoy them as much as I do."
And they can. Gene and Nancy's valley of daylilies is free for viewing. Anyone is invited to come and look at the gardens during the day. Purchasing the flora is welcome, but unnecessary. The Smiths want the flowers enjoyed. They only ask that for the safety of the flowers, pets and small children are left at home, and guests avoid stepping amongst the plants when getting a closer look.
That day, Gene was "deadheading," removing yesterday's blooms from the lily plants. Daylilies, I now understand, are called such because they bloom for only one day. They curl open their fists of petals in the morning, beam vibrantly for a few hours and wither with the sun. The next morning, all that is left is a shriveled remnant.
Gene gestured to plant after plant after plant: Hurricane Swirls, Summer Wine, Kings Business, Hold Your Horses, and more. Each one he described as tenderly and exuberantly as the one before. Some had petals that curled wide and spidery, some were large, some small, some "double bloomed," some had "shark's teeth" ridges at the edges of the petals.
"You can't compare them," he kept saying. "They're all so different."
Like women, I joked, all women are beautiful, and shouldn't be compared. Gene beamed.
"That's right!" he cried. "They're all my little girls. My children."
brevity of the bloom
As we walked through the daylily kingdom, Gene snapped off a brilliant crimson bloom with yellow flooding its center and handed it to me. My face must have given me away.
"It's all right," Gene said. "They're going to die anyway."
I was awed by his generosity, and struck by the brevity of a daylily bloom's life. Today I thought I saw a very light thread in my very dark hair. Know how old I am? Twenty-two. And I really did catch myself checking for gray hair. Some people are going to laugh and scrunch their noses when they read that, and I will too, in 10 or 20 or 30 years. But it really does feel like last week I was 16.
And wasn't I? I'm suddenly in sight of a college degree, living in New England for my second photo internship and trying to avoid the tide of serial dating. But yesterday I was a high school sophomore in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, violently refusing to do my geometry homework and obsessing over the state of my eyeliner. I bet if I blink, I'll be 35 and looking fondly at my days at the Monitor as if they were, well, five minutes ago.
Some of the daylilies were looking a little less fresh, a little more weather-worn than the others. Some had petals that had been eaten down to veins by insects. Some were bent a little, exposed to a force outside Gene and Nancy's watch. Some were wilting faster than others. But they were no less beautiful than the unbroken blossoms. And I was fascinated by all of them. Wear and tear doesn't diminish the lilies' beauty. Sometimes it enhances it. They wear the strife of wind and sun and fauna with graceful resilience. Like many people I know.
(a Vintage Bordeaux daylily)
Let me give you the cliche: Our lives are short. We spend so much time panicking over little things and passing people, and we're suddenly darkening, ebbing, becoming dead heads. But since we're to bloom so briefly, isn't it best that we live brightly?
This is not an Eminem song. I'm not preaching the mantra of "get it now" and "get it all" and "get it big." I am not quoting Kurt Cobain's "It's better to burn out than to fade away."
I am saying I want to live a life that brings beauty to the world. If this lily has just a day, let it be a day full of brightness. Brightness of character and soul that brings joy to those around me.
And I want to live a life that notices beauty. You know what daylilies do all day? Drink in the sky and earth. It took me five minutes to turn around and stop to smell the roses. Or lilies, in this case. But you know, the Smiths have roses, too. In Aradeena, they have a little piece of Eden.
But I was shooting lilies, not looking at roses. Guess I'll have to go back to look.
Let me give you the cliche: Our lives are short. We spend so much time panicking over little things and passing people, and we're suddenly darkening, ebbing, becoming dead heads. But since we're to bloom so briefly, isn't it best that we live brightly?
This is not an Eminem song. I'm not preaching the mantra of "get it now" and "get it all" and "get it big." I am not quoting Kurt Cobain's "It's better to burn out than to fade away."
I am saying I want to live a life that brings beauty to the world. If this lily has just a day, let it be a day full of brightness. Brightness of character and soul that brings joy to those around me.
And I want to live a life that notices beauty. You know what daylilies do all day? Drink in the sky and earth. It took me five minutes to turn around and stop to smell the roses. Or lilies, in this case. But you know, the Smiths have roses, too. In Aradeena, they have a little piece of Eden.
But I was shooting lilies, not looking at roses. Guess I'll have to go back to look.
