Day Lilies

We had no day lilies at the Schmeling home at 1127 Kansas Street. I remember seeing them around town. The large Kate Scoular house on the southwest corner of tenth and Commercial streets had some and the “ghost house” south of the new, modern home occupied at that time by George Day which would have been on the southwest corner of Ninth and Commercial streets had a little bit of everything, all growing large and unattended. In that yard were large patches of day lilies.

Day lilies have a lily-type of flower that comes up on a stalk from amidst a group of long green leaves. They are so named because the flowers close at night and then, when hit by the morning sun, they open up. They close down again as the sun sets.

When I settled in Lincoln following my return from Vietnam and the U.S. Army, we rented a duplex at 1801 South 25th Street. It was a nice, older neighborhood with large 1920s era homes many of which had day lilies in the yard. With twins due to join the family in the fall of 1970, it was house hunting time since the duplex was too small. We purchased and moved into a house at 3801 South 40th Street which was one of the first houses in that area having been built in the 1930s. We moved during the winter with ice and snow on the ground—never a winter move again for me.

We knew the new house had a number of trees and bushes, but the first spring, there was a voyage of discovery with little green shoots poking through the ground all over the yard. What were they? On the south side of the house, there were a number of the green shoots which proved to be day lilies. These produced the familiar orange flower in early June. I love them because they came up every spring without any effort on my part. I did note that they had a tendency to spread out and had to make sure they didn’t creep onto the front lawn.

The orange version of day lily is the most common, but I have also seen some with yellow lilies and also some with a maroon and red flower.

Occasionally, while driving in the country, you will see day lilies in a ditch on the side of the road. These came from a farm house which is no longer there and spread from the yard down to the ditch and then both directions along the ditch.

I highly recommend this flower for those of you who like to see annual results with little to no effort. They are a bulb plant and the bulbs can be easily transplanted. I’ve had good luck getting bulbs free by asking someone who has a lot of them in the yard. The answer has always been, “Take as many as you need. We have plenty of them.” They do best on the south side of a structure. I’m not sure they would open if they were in the shade on the north side of a house or garage.

Editor’s Note: The author, Richard Schmeling was raised in Superior. He left Superior following high school graduation. Now retired and living in Lincoln, Neb., he frequently recalls for the readers of this newspaper, stories from his growing up years in Superior.