Gail was the recipient of the 2007 Regional Newsletter Award given by the American Hemerocallis Society for regional newsletter articles under the category of BEST ARTICLE ON ELECTRONICS OR NEW TECHNOLOGY.  The subject of her article was the Email "Robin" of AHS, which includes approximately 1,200 members nationwide (and a few international!) and was included in the Spring 2007 Region 13 Newsletter, The ArkLa Daylily.  That article is posted below for your perusal....

The AHS E-Mail Robin:  Daylily Fun in the 21^st Century

By Gail Rasberry

As a 10 year hobby gardener, I am still “green” and learning, growing mostly old-time favorites handed down from friends, relatives, and neighbors, or traded for.  But a couple of years ago, one in particular caught my fancy (pictured above and since confirmed to be a mislabeled cultivar that remains unknown, but my favorite), and I have been consumed ever since with the urge to collect more and more varieties of Hemerocallis.  While my collection of 250 cultivars is small compared to many, to me (having only been collecting 2 years) it is amazing how it has exploded.  I don’t think I purchased any other garden plant in 2006 that was not a daylily!

I am a member since 2005 of the Craighead County Master Gardeners, but being relatively new there I hadn’t become familiar with what members were daylily enthusiasts, and our monthly meetings were focused on the presentation at hand, which unfortunately, was not daylily related every month.  There was no daylily club in the area, so I wasn’t sure what to do! 

Now, up until seven years ago, I had never operated a computer, but when I went to work for Arkansas State University as a secretary, it was a must.  It wasn’t long before I had a home computer and internet access, and began becoming familiar with lots of daylily websites.  Every site I visited, in the virtual world, was a member of and promoted membership in the AHS, and the AHS site was fun to browse and read up on my new favorite garden plant, so I figured since there wasn’t a daylily club to join, the next best thing would be to join AHS.  Once I joined, after a while, I started hearing from various places about the E-Mail Robin.   I thought this E-Mail thing sounded like fun, and all it takes is an email to one of the list “owners”!  (Tim White can be reached at  TedWhite1@aol.com and Timothy J. Fehr at fehrtj@charter.net .)  Once you are added to the member list, you will receive, by email, the messages (or “posts”) from the other members, and if you send a message to the group’s address, everyone in the group receives it.  Twice a week, a “Bulletin Board” message comes with robin members’ sales, too, and I have gotten some great bargains!

Since joining, I have learned so much about so many things it is hard to even express.  Tips and information from the country’s leading hybridizers, as well as long-time daylily growers that are still “just” hobby gardeners.  The friendships I have begun are so rewarding, too!    As a direct result of my joining “the robin” I began an email correspondence with our RVP Joe Goudeau, and his wife, Ginger, and I consider us to be friends as a result.  During this correspondence, she invited me to the Arkansas State Daylily Society’s fall meeting, where I got to meet them in person, as well as our Director Dr. John Holland, Bob Stassen (our new RPD for Arkansas), and hybridizer Curt Hanson!  Since I am not in a local club, this first “daylilies only” in-person gathering was new territory for me, but because of our email relationship, I felt among friends right from the start.

I mean, don’t’ get me wrong… I enjoy the regional newsletters, and noticed the symposium and meeting announcements contained therein, but had it not been for the robin, I probably would not have attended.  Seeing an “ad” in the newsletter is not the same thing as reading an email post about all the events, speakers, auction lists, activities planned, and how much fun these meetings were.  Of course, now that I have been to one, I am eagerly looking forward to our regional meeting in Searcy (which is only a two hour drive from here!) and meeting some daylily folks that live a little closer to me than Baton Rouge.

Another exciting thing that happened to me because of the robin, was a contest hosted by Tommy Maddox, hybridizer, from Biloxi, MS.  He told the story of how he had pulled a diploid seedling from the compost pile because his wife, Joyce, liked it and because even on top of the compost pile, it had bloomed for him all summer!  So, he had decided to register it, and was asking for suggestions of a name.  I posted several possible names with no expectations (I mean, there are many members of the robin more adept than I at naming daylilies, and many people had replied with some excellent suggestions), and I had jokingly asked if the winner would be receiving a division of the plant, to which he answered “yes!”  Imagine my excitement upon receiving the robin post from Tommy selecting my submission, H. ‘Trash To Treasure’ as the winner!!!  Tommy promptly sent my prize, and I am looking forward to seeing that big pink flower with the extremely long, pinched sepals, bloom for me next year!

Another friend that I “found” through the robin is from not-too-distant Alicia, Arkansas, from whom I got the names of a few others in this area that I am hoping to meet in the near future.  I guess the norm is to join a local daylily club, and subsequently join AHS; however my experience has been the opposite.  Meeting other local daylily enthusiasts in this manner has not been easy, however, through the email robin, I have come to feel as if that is my “club” affiliation, and for now, that is fine.  I do hope to find a “real” club home, that has monthly or quarterly meetings, has activities such as flower shows and garden tours, hosts educational symposiums that are not half-way across the country and cost a lot of money, and where I could hug the necks of newfound friends (and maybe do some trades).  If you are interested in starting or joining a daylily club in northeast Arkansas, please feel free to email me…. I’d like to join, too! 

The thing is, if you have email and are not signed up for the email robin, you are missing out on great information, great friendships, great sales notices, and many hilarious stories from some very colorful people!  Hope to “see” you there! 

Gail Rasberry
Bay, (Northeast) Arkansas