I made a little headway in the garden today. I also hurt my back trying to carry too much stuff to the compost pile. I scratched the car twice with the wheelbarrow--once coming, once going. I left an enormous mess in the room where I potted bulbs yesterday. I stepped on a dead bird. And my office seems displeased I spent the day at home.
       My major accomplishment was cleaning up the day lilies. They are now very clean day lilies. When I descended upon them this morning their long leaves were soggy and brown and matted to the earth, and their spent stalks were colorless, hollow sticks, standing straight up. They were covered with a layer of fallen leaves.
       I raked the leaves, revealing the nice dark dirt and a couple of good worms that hadn't yet gone wherever it is worms go to spend the winter. Then I clipped back the leaves to a manageable 6 inches, pulled out the dead stalks, took a hoe to the neighboring weeds, and fluffed up the soil. The day lilies can now go safely into winter. No little creatures can burrow in their leaves, and the snow can form a protective layer of mulch over them. They will also have a head start in spring, free to grow in a clean neighborhood without weeds stealing their nutrients.
       Not only do I not even really like day lilies, they are the last flower in the world that would appreciate any of this effort. If you never so much as glanced at them, they would continue to thrive and multiply. Their coloring is a dull, Halloween orange that annoys me slightly. They also possess an excessive amount of ungainly foliage that prevents them from mixing well with other flowers in a border. For this they are often singled out and given their own special area, a double offense for such an inelegant specimen. They are pedestrian and a little vulgar.
       It is, I realize, impertinent to criticize a flower this way, especially an orange flower, lest one be marked a snob. But the problem with day lilies is not that they are middlebrow--though they are. It's just that they are exceedingly average. Theirs is not the garish, fun-loving orange of dahlias or zinnias, middlebrow flowers I adore. And the sense of uncomplicated joy a daisy can bring is no less powerful because it is common. But one does not journey to higher thoughts about life, love, or beauty when gazing upon a day-lily blossom. Poets write no odes to it. Day lilies are sensible shoes. They are perfectly nice, but boring, dinner guests.
       Yet they are welcome at my table. That is because, as much as gardeners delight in decrying aesthetic offenders, we secretly love coming around to flowers previously dismissed. It makes us feel benevolent, extending our blessings on the unloved or, as in this case, the unworthy. Over time, I have come to appreciate the day lily's optimism and sense of timing. It shrewdly appears at a point in the summer when not much else is going on, and guilelessly asserts itself. I have also found that if I mix day lilies with a clashing purple flower such as a campanula or salvia, it brings out their racy, slutty side. I also inherited some fine hybrids in subtler dusky tones of maroon and plum and a good yellow one that has a sweet fragrance. I still can't say I eagerly await them, but I am pleased to see them when they arrive.