Hard life in the day of lilies

I'm always getting into trouble for nurturing naughty plants. Wattle, agapanthus, bear's breeches, jasmine and Mexican daisy all have a place in my garden, largely because they gallop over the wasteland that is the perimeter of our section as fast as Jeremy Clarkson in an Aston Martin.
When you have a couple of acres surrounded by a stream on three sides, you necessarily have a lot of bank. And although I may be botanically incorrect, I'm not irresponsible enough to cultivate the gorse, ginger (although I do love ginger) and tobacco weed that were colonising the area until recently.
Once it was disposed of, we had to find something that would cover up the ground quickly before it reappeared, and the budget didn't stretch to the sort of interesting plants of which you need about 40 at $10 a pop to cover a couple of square metres.
Unfortunately, before I could appropriate free cuttings from friends who already had lovely, fat clumps of bear's breeches, my partner noticed that our local council had planted an area of new traffic islands and roundabouts with day lilies. At the time, they were spewing forth yellow (my least favourite colour) flowers by the zillion, and the affair of the century began.
He circled the traffic islands almost daily until I suggested the roading division might start charging him a toll, and then undertook a course of study on the internet of MA intensity to find out exactly which day lilies would cover our bank as quickly and thoroughly as bear's breeches.
My moratorium on yellow added a fairly serious element of challenge but he overcame that by finding evergreen, miniature day lilies in pink and red at a nursery an hour's drive from where we live in the middle of nowhere.
Although the plants were considerably more expensive than free cuttings of bear's breeches, I was somewhat heartened to learn how easy they are to grow. Well they would be, wouldn't they, if councils plonk hundreds of them on traffic islands.
The day lily (Hemerocallis) is a hardy perennial. It'll grow just about anywhere and flower from October to January and March to April. Choose the right variety for your particular location and you may find it flowers for half the year.
Ideally, it likes sun from early morning till early afternoon (don't we all). You can plant it at any time of the year but avoid winter.
Plant day lilies about 60cm apart and don't put them in too deep - just cover the crown. Give them some blood and bone at planting time and a fertiliser in September and March.
Keep them well watered and mulched and continue to water two or three times a week while they are flowering.
When flowering is over, remove the scapes and take off the dying leaves. If you have the evergreen variety you can cut back the foliage by about two thirds in winter to encourage luxurious spring growth.
When the new leaves start to grow, watch out for aphids. You may have problems with slugs and snails at the end of winter, especially on the deciduous varieties, so employ your favourite method of pest control.
My favourite is clapping my hands and hissing, which doesn't work for slugs but does for cats, who like to tussle with any new plants in the garden and uproot them to see whether or not there are any interesting small animals of prey cowering underneath.
But I figure that if day lilies will survive and multiply in the middle of a busy roundabout, a few cats aren't going to destroy them. Anyway, they'll get some protection from the big clumps of bear's breeches I'm going to plant alongside.