From the time we moved into our home in Madison, WI, in 1981 until we retired from full-time work in 1997, we tolerated the hills and weeds in the yard, with the exception of a small vegetable garden and a few flowers, including one daylily called 'Catherine Woodbury'.

As retirement time neared, we began to consider which changes we might make. Unfortunately, we couldn't agree on anything! So we hired a landscape designer (who later became a best friend) to help sort it out. He set us up with the bones of the garden, hardscape, and trees, shrubs and boulders. However, he did NOT design in 250 daylilies and 250 hosta! That was all our doing.

By 1999 we were adding to 'Catherine Woodbury' and becoming addicted. Time to join the Wisconsin Daylily Society and AHS Region 2. The rest is history! In 2003 we took over as co-chairs of the WDS Plant Sale and knew all the plants that were coming to the sale from our members. This was a great chance to feed our addiction, and feed it we did. Thank goodness someone else took over as chair this past year!

We've been fortunate to be able to travel internationally since retirement. It has been such fun finding souvenirs to bring home that would fit in our garden, starting with a General (reproduction) from the terracotta army in Xian, China.

We love to have visitors enjoy the garden, and were especially pleased to be one of the tour gardens this past summer for the AHS National Convention. It was so exciting to have many of our favorite hybridizers actually here in our garden as well as so many others whose names we recognized from the AHS Email Robin.

Now we've come to the conclusion that, as we get older and the work of taking care of the garden gets harder, it's time to begin the painful process of cutting back. Seems like we've read on the Robin that several others are going through the same thing. This past summer, after the convention, we donated fifty-five plants (out of almost 300) to the WDS club plant sale and only brought home 5 new ones!! Just couldn't resist those. The bed these came out of is now filled with dwarf conifers – much less work. Next summer there will more to donate to the plant sale.

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