The Absentee Gardeners: My brief brush with fame

I have never sought to be famous but for one brief moment I was a starlet, although not of my doing. My claim to fame was due to a daylily named after me (sort of). It all started one summer when I made my yearly summer pilgrimage out to Holly Hill Daylily Farm in Moncure, NC. The owner, Jim Massey, had an amazing collection of daylilies with one new spectacular daylily on display—only it wasn’t for sale. This nameless daylily was a sport discovered by his friend, Miss Iola.

The next year I found to my delight that “Iola’s Red Tet” (for tetraploid) was available but I’m sure you will agree with me that the name was not a promising one. Jim then announced that he wanted to name it “Kit Flynn,” which you can surely understand was music to my ears—but only if Miss Iola agreed.

Would Miss Iola agree? By this time my reputation was at stake as I had broadcast the news far and wide. In short, I’d announced to the world about my newfound fame. What would happen if Miss Iola disapproved of me?

Not only did Miss Iola disapprove of “Kit Flynn,” she actually thought it was blah. Blah? Rarely have I been called blah. She wanted “Circus Wagon” so Jim countered, “What about “Kit’s Circus Wagon?” Miss Iola thought that had a slight zing—and that, dear readers, is how “Kit’s Circus Wagon” entered the world.

Now when new cultivars are introduced to the market, they can be quite expensive. Hybridizers have to make their money on their new introductions in the first couple of years before other breeders offer these same cultivars. “Kit’s Circus Wagon” was no exception: There were only twelve specimens in the whole wide world.

With this thought, terror grabbed me: What would happen if one of these twelve specimens ended up in the hands of a not-very-nice person? I had one of the specimens and Jim gave another to a friend who had done him several favors so we were down to ten. I had six friends who obviously needed my namesake so I contemplated going to the bank for a daylily loan because “Kit’s Circus Wagon” was not inexpensive.

I managed to scrape up my pennies and e-mailed Jim that I wanted to buy six specimens. I wrote what probably will be the largest daylily check I will ever write in my whole life and distributed “Kit’s Circus Wagon” to my selected friends, who mouthed the appropriate oohs and ahs, thanking me for my generosity.

Generosity? No dear readers, this was not an act of generosity. The truth of the matter was that I simply had to scatter my namesake around in an effort to ensure that “Kit’s Circus Wagon” would be a survivor. After all, who wants to be named for a daylily that can’t take the heat or pass the muster?

Alas, Jim Massey, a dear friend, never got around to registering “Kit’s Circus Wagon,” proving once again that fame is fleeting.