Alaska News

Jeff Lowenfels: Immortality and Grandpa Al's daylilies

I have been writing this column for nigh on 40 years (come November) so by now many of you know that I come from a long line of avid gardeners, albeit East Coast ones. My grandfather had a 16-acre gentleman's hobby farm. I grew up on an 8-acre one just down the road a bit.

It wasn't just the Lowenfels side of the family that loved to garden, either. My aunts and uncles on both sides gardened like crazy. Let's just say it wasn't easy getting rid of excess zucchini to family members. And I think there was always an undercurrent of competition when it came to the tomatoes.

Did I say that my grandfather had a hobby farm? Some hobby! He was an early inventor of mist propagation systems under which he propagated and then sold hollies. He hybridized lilacs and he used to sell thousands of tomato plants every spring from Willow Lake Farm. To me, he grew just about every kind of crop you could imagine eating, vegetable or fruit. He is the source of the Lowenfels family rule that the water has to be on the stove and boiling before anyone picks the corn.

Grandpa Al loved Hemerocallis, known as daylilies. Though he had them all over the property, I didn't realize how much until my father and I went over to Grandpa's to retrieve some of his favorite plants after he died. I remember digging them up with Dad, he in his familiar gardening jeans and size 13 dress shoes-turned-gardening wear. I was home from college, with longer hair than he wanted and a newly minted beard he probably wasn't crazy about, either. It wasn't a festive time, obviously. I was impressed by how important it was to Dad to save a bit of his father in this way.

We took those daylilies back to our "farm," along with some other plants, though I can only remember the lilies. We replanted them, not in an obvious spot, but off to the side of a field. They weren't meant for landscaping. These were plants that belonged to Grandpa Al and as Dad would say, when he saw them thriving, "That's immortality."

Over the years those daylilies grew, flowered and even spread, as they will. Dad preached that the flowering of a plant was only part of the process of growing them and shouldn't necessarily be the only event celebrated, but every time those daylilies opened, I am quite sure he stopped doing what he as doing and thought about his dad. I know I did.

When my dad's health got to the point my parents had to move, I dug up those daylilies and transplanted them in the new, much smaller yard. When I visited with my own family I would point them out and explain where the plants came from and that they represented immortality.

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This was all a hundred years ago, or so it seems. I brought a few of those Hemerocallis back to Alaska after my father's death back in the '80s, even though they were not truly hardy here. I planted them in what we call the Moose Garden and every year since, I have watched them sprout leaves and waited for the flowers. None came.

Looking back, I am amazed the plants did as well as they have. They may not flower, but thankfully, they emerge each year and, as they did for Dad, cause me to pause and reflect on my father and grandfather. I point them out to my family every single chance I get.

Ah, but I drone on. It has been an unusually warm summer. The mountains surrounding Anchorage don't have any snow cover. I don't remember having as many sunny days, not to mention actually hot, sunny days.

And, this year for the first time in 35 years, I saw a flower on my grandfather's daylilies.

I was mowing the lawn, trying to avoid the incredible number of yellow jackets, when I came around the side of the Moose Garden and saw it: a single, beautiful deep red-orange daylily flower. I took my foot off the pedal and the Deere stopped instantly. A big smile and a few tears crossed my face and I filled with memories of Grandpa Al and Dad.

That is immortality.

Jeff’s Alaska Garden Calendar

Enjoy: How many more frost-free days do we have left? What does El Nino mean to gardening? It is anyone's guess, so enjoy what we have while you can and hope it goes on longer than usual.

Brussels sprouts: Harvest after frost.

Lawns: Last call on seeding. It takes around 21 days to germinate lawn seed.

Butter and eggs: Keep at it. They are going to seed! Ugh.

Jeff Lowenfels

Jeff Lowenfels has written a weekly gardening column for the ADN for more than 45 years. His columns won the 2022 gold medal at the Garden Communicators International conference. He is the author of a series of books on organic gardening available at Amazon and elsewhere. He co-hosts the "Teaming With Microbes" podcast.

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