Remember our beloved dogs about whom I write so passionately?

I am less enthused about them today, specifically Peyton and Shadow.

Yesterday, in their youthful cavorting about our yard, they smushed my daylilies. Trampled down the lush emerald foliage. Laid waste to the stems just as they were about to bloom.

Let me say that while I enjoy gardening, the results in my yard are more hit or miss. The daylilies I can count on to be a hit. Actually Rupert planted them a dozen or more years ago along a fence beside our house. They had been given to us by his dad, Hunt. This particular variety has maroon coloring on the petals, with an orange-gold center. I do not know the name of the variety, but I’ll bet Scoot and Betty Wilson could tell me quickly. They are the green thumbed couple whose daylily garden is a showplace right now, at the corner of Bates and Court.

Daylilies belong to the genus Hemerocallis, from the Greek. Hemera means “day” and Kallos means “beauty.” Each bloom lasts one day. You can break off one bloom and place it in a vase or a bowl without water and it will stay open all day.

Hunt’s daylilies were easy to grow and have performed beautifully every summer since Rupert planted them.

Felder Rushing, Mississippi’s horticulure guru, has simplified garden design elements to three categories: “fluffy, spiky, curvy.” My daylilies are the “curvy” in my yard. Or were.

I could count on that row of flowers emerging from the thick greenery this time every year. I had checked earlier this week to be sure buds were forming somewhere down there among the  curving leaves. They were. The thin stems bore bulging tops that were about to burst open with their maroon and gold display.

Until yesterday. Never in the past dozen years has a dog thought it would be fun to roll in the daylilies. They have stood undisturbed and unnoticed by the dogs all these years.

Peyton, a fiest-something mix, and Shadow, a solid black lab-something mix, are best friends and entertain themselves running around, chasing each other and wrestling. I looked out the window and they were rolling around in my ready-to-peak daylilies.

“Stop,” I ran screaming out into the yard, my nightgown flapping. They ignored me. They don’t mind well.

Eventually they moved to another area, and I was left to survey the damage. It took about one minute for them to flatten the flowers. I hoped momentarily that the foliage and stems would somehow recover and stand back up. No chance.

They did miss clumps on both ends, so we’ll have a few flowers.

The sad part is we’ll have to look at the smushed foliage for the rest of the summer. I’m assuming the rule for daylilies is the same as for daffodils, that you must allow the leaves to die back before you mow them down.

If I am wrong, if I can mow this sad section of vain vegetation so that it is only a bad memory, not a summer-long reminder of my dogs’ errant behavior, please, somebody, let me know.