Day lilies growing in the Commemorative Garden at the Gene and Irene Wockner Hospice Center, Kirkland, Washington.
Thanks to the several people who have told me that these are almost certainly daylilies. (I originally used two words, “day lilies,” to title this and I’m going to leave the title that way for now.) I’ve also been told that the name reflects the short blooming period of the individual flowers, which might remain in full color for only a “day.” While I did not know the name of the flowers, I certainly could tell that the blooms did not last long. In fact, in this photograph, the buds of incipient flowers are visible above and to the right of the main flower, and one that has already run its course is near the top of the bright red and yellow flower.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Flowers photographed in the Commemorative Garden at the Gene and Irene Wockner Hospice Center, Kirkland, Washington.
During the past week and a half I spent a great deal of time in view of the beautiful and quiet garden in which these flowers were found. I think they are lilies, but I’m not the world’s greatest flower identifier (to say the least!), and I would welcome an accurate identification from anyone who knows. After looking at the garden from indoors for a week, I finally decided to take a slow and quite walk through it one afternoon, and I made a few photographs as a sort of meditation.
The reason I was at this place was not, of course, a happy one. My mother, Elinor Danforth Mitchell, entered the hospice a week and a half ago after suffering a serious stroke at the age of 93, a stroke that was the sort she was undoubtedly thinking about when she gave us advance instructions (which was so like her!) about what to do should this happen. She not only lived to 93 (like her sister “Dolly,” and her mother Nora), but she was amazingly resilient as she faced a series of challenges during the past few decades, beginning with the loss of her husband, Richard S. Mitchell, over 20 years ago and continuing with health challenges including arthritis and macular degeneration that left her nearly blind. (A bright spot though – in the past month or two, a procedure she had earlier this year had actually given her back some of her sight, much to the amazement of all of us and much to her pleasure.) Through it all, she remained as positive as she had always been. About her blindness, she had said that getting angry or depressed wouldn’t help, so she was just going to accept it and move forward – and she did. So in her eighties she figured out how to be almost completely self-sufficient in her apartment, and people who met her often did not even realize at first that she had lost her sight. Perhaps most important to her, she kept her mental acuity right up until her stroke. She could – and frequently would! – recite the birthdays of four children, four children-in-law, eleven grand children and more. As my sister wrote recently, she could probably tell you, to the penny, what she paid for the Thanksgiving turkey in 1976!
All four of her children were scheduled to visit to help her with a move from her apartment to new living arrangements, and two were to arrive on the day of her stroke. This meant that all four of us were able to be with her during the week and a half until she passed away quietly on August 2, 2012.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Late summer corn lilies begin to take on fall colors, Yosemite National Park.
Corn Lilies are among my favorite Sierra Nevada high country plants. During their short summer growth period they begin as corn-cob-shaped shoots that spring up in wet areas as the snow melts out. They quickly grow into lush green plant in thick bunches that are intensely green and which have beautiful curving shapes and textures. (This makes them a very popular subject for photographers!) As the season continues they begin to show some “flaws” from insect damage and so forth, and at some point in August they begin to lose their green color, often beginning to pick up some brown coloration that can be nearly golden in the right light. At some point in September even the most durable specimens begin to be striped with yellow, brown, or even black and they finally simply fall over.
I found this bunch very close to our campsite in the back-country of Yosemite National Park around the middle of September. Although you cannot see it in this photograph, this clump of corn lilies had fallen over in a most interesting way – they all fell pointing away from the center of the group! So these plants are in the middle of falling over, and are lit by early morning light diffused by forest cover.
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more. Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email
Corn lily plants take on autumn colors in the Sierra Nevada, Yosemite National Park.
The corn lily plants are among my favorite markers of the passage of the short high Sierra summer season. When the high country first opens and water is everywhere, the first shoots look almost like unhusked ears of corn as they come up in wet areas. (I don’t think this is where the plant gets its name – more on that in a moment.) They quickly grow to several feet tall, clustered in thick bunches, as the mosquito season arrives – and at this time they are incredibly lush and green. At this time they are also a favorite subject for photographers. A few seem to sprout much taller than others and produce clusters of white flowers. Then as August wears on and the soil begins to dry the plants also begin to lose their lush quality and brown areas appear and perhaps some spots and holes appear in the leaves. Often by the end of the month I can find some that are starting to turn one of several shades: golden-yellow, tan, or very dark brown verging on black. By mid September few healthy looking plants remain and the stalks (which look very much like corn stalks) begin to fall over to the ground.
It hardly matters where this particular group of corn lily plants was growing, so I’ll just say that they were within a few minutes of our camp site. I can hardly ever pass up the opportunity to try to photograph this plant, no matter which stage of its life it is currently going through. These had fallen over and were rapidly losing what remained of their green color.
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Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.
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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
