Tag Archives: iris

April 21, 2024 · 10:04 am

Weeds vs Flowers

This is a line of three 8-foot-brick planters that divide the top of our driveway area from the front yard. There are lot of perennials in there, but they are in a death fight right now with the weeds that have exploded in the last few weeks.

My husband always looks at things, throws up his hands and announces the weeds have won, there is NO way the flowers can have survived, we might as well just burn it all and start over. (This is only ONE of the reasons that HE mows the grass and I handle the flowers.)

Yesterday I weeded the first of the three planters. I cut back the rose bushes, cut out a lot of dead stuff, weeded, and then cut the overgrown greenery from the irises and the Stella de Oro flowers at the opposite end of the planter from the taller rose bush. Things are much better now. In fact, when I insisted my husband come and ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ last night, he was ‘astonished’ (his word) at the difference. :0)

Here’s another view of that planter.

Here is today’s project – the middle 8-foot planter.

A little daunting at the moment, but I’ll tackle this as soon as I finish writing the blog posts for the day.

I hope that your weather is such that you can spend time outside, soaking up a bit of sunshine, breathing in the air, and enjoying life.

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April 17, 2024 · 9:51 am

A Trip Around the Yard

Rio Samba Roses, various iris, and Mama and Baby Snails we made.

More Rio Samba roses, and the pretty purple perennial I don’t know the name of.

Azaleas and iris

Some of our flowers are blooming nicely now. It makes me happy to walk around the yard and see a lot of blooms, plus buds. Everything needs weeding, pruning, hacking down, etc., all around the yard, so that makes me feel a bit guilty, as well.

I’ll start with my veggie planters this morning, then move to the roses planters, seeing how far I can get before I poop out or it gets too warm.

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March 23, 2024 · 2:39 pm

Weed-Whacker-ess

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I’m not this young (by a LONG shot) and don’t look this good, but I’m making progress with the weed-whacking this afternoon. It’s now 63 degrees and sunny. The stuff I’m whacking is still pretty wet, but it’s coming down.

I’ve finished the 3 veggie planters on the east side of the house and am taking a ‘back break’ and drinking some water before going out again. I want to at least finish under the porch, under the deck, and along the back sidewalk before I call it a day today.

This weed whacker is working fine. Everything is compatible. I told my husband I was going to mark this one with some tape, and that I wanted to do away with any others we have, as they don’t do near as good a job as this one does. Right now, it seems that he is in agreement. He is still holding on to his announcement he was not going to mow in March. I really can’t blame him. He spends a lot of time on our riding mower during the mowing season. Usually this begins sometime in April. This year is weird, but he’s trying to ignore it. :0)

Oh, I almost forgot! When I went out to weed whack this afternoon, look at what I found!

(Please, just look at the IRIS, not all the weeds in and around the planter….)

Going to rest a bit more, drink more water, then head out for the next session.

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October 22, 2023 · 1:43 pm

Iridescent Iris

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Dorota Piotrowiak – Imago Space

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July 23, 2023 · 11:39 am

‘Niche’ Planter – Before and After

This is obviously “Before” this morning’s work.

It looks a bit better now, I think. When I got the weeds and Bermuda out, I found that grasshoppers have been gorging on the iris spears. I’ll go back out later with my EIGHT spray and hose the sweet iris plants down.

The NEXT outside project is gathering tomatoes and then cleaning up the two planters. This has been an awful year for veggies. My main square foot garden plants started out well, then got drowned by all the rain, beaten down by hail, and then baked by the sun, over and over again. I’ll need to clean that up later, as well.

The tomatoes LOOKED like they were doing well, but the tomatoes were cherry tomatoes, rather than fulls-sized, and were ‘off’ in flavor. I’ve gathered the few full-sized ones from time to time. My husband pronounced THEM ‘mealy’ and wouldn’t eat but a sparse few here and there, so I lost interest. I’ll see what I can salvage and then clean things out. Some years just aren’t good ones for veggies.

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April 19, 2021 · 10:10 am

Iris Season

Our iris season always starts with deep purple iris. They are almost finished now. They are followed by pale yellow iris, and those are blooming madly all over the place now, along with some mauve colored ones here. :0)

We also have a few very pale coral iris and some ‘mauve’ iris, but those are few and far in-between.

A few years ago I devoted one of our brick planters to planting new colors of iris. Each year I did up some of those and replant them elsewhere in the yard.

I love all colors of iris, but I wish the deep purple and the yellow would bloom at the same time. Apparently, though, they have a system which decides which bloom when, and mostly, only one color blooms at a time around here.

These are two yellow iris from the planter I talked about. They have a really nice, deep yellow color. We also brought in one of the mauve ones.

If I get bogged down, I just go outside and walk around the yard a bit. Seeing things blooming lifts my spirits.

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March 21, 2021 · 10:19 am

Spring Anyone?

Daffodils and Tulip Tree
Forsythia
Red Bud Tree
Another Red Bud Tree

We actually have 7 Red Bud Trees blooming right now. Iris greenery is spearing out of the ground and in some of the planters around the yard. Today the sun is shining and the high is supposed to get to 70!

Much of the rest of the week will be rainy, bringing life to more and more.

I love this time of year.

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April 7, 2020 · 9:43 am

Promise

If you’re like me, the pandemic is causing a roller coaster of feelings, a bit of fear, lots of care and caution, and a sincere hope that this new virus strain won’t take many more lives before the experts get a handle on it and we can put this awful scare behind us. I am finding that escaping to my art room, getting paint all over me, helps me cope. I’m trying to get up there for a few minutes each day. I’ve painted an old, stained tee shirt to give it new life. I’ve painted some wooden earrings I look forward to wearing. I have an idea for a painting rattling around now that I hope to start this afternoon.

 

Another thing that helps is taking walks around my yard, seeing new buds ready to burst into glorious life. The buds are a reliable promise that things will get back to normal in time, and there is hope for the future for people and our countries.

 

I’m noticing that several of the yard critters my husband and I have made are needing to be spruced up. This sweet shovel bird will get my attention soon. Then I hope to move around the yard, giving our metal yard critters some love – and paint!

 

One of my favorite roses is Rio Samba. I love it because the buds you see here will soon start to open up. They start as bright yellow, then develop a coral edge on the petals, then finally turn almost all coral before needing to be pruned. At one time we’ll have all three stages of blossoms on the plant. This is one of three rose bushes we have.

How can you feel down when you see the promise of a blooming wisteria?

My veggie garden plants are smiling, too, with the promise of a continuing nice harvest. I have harvested twice so far in this young season, giving us lots of head lettuce and spinach leaves for our salads. The plants are loving the cooler gray days with lots of rain. The sun is actually shining this morning for the first time in a couple of weeks, so I’ll get out there, take some pics, and share them with you later today.

I hope that you can look around and find the promise of better times to come, too. If not, I’m delighted to share the promise I found with you.

Stay safe.

 

 

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April 19, 2019 · 9:43 am

Sending Spring Your Way

The purple iris bloom first. As they fade, the yellow ones start.

This is now my husband’s favorite flower, so each time the blooms are spent, I split some and plant them in another place in the yard.

The wisteria has given us a nice display this year. We’re trying to get it to go up into the tree on the opposite end of the wood pile. We actually saw some blooms up there this year! Our rose bushes were looking sad at the end of the season, so I cut them  WAAAAAY  back, figuring they would either like it or croak.  They seem to be happy with lots of buds right now.

We have some yellow blooms since this picture was taken. I’ll see if I can get a pic to share with you later.

 

I love this time of year!

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June 12, 2017 · 12:30 pm

“Love is the Flower…”

“Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.” – John Lennon

 

This nice bunch of lilies is almost finished for the year. It looks like a lily bouquet to me, and I love the rich color.

 

Last year, once the summer was in full swing, I sprinkled a bunch of zinnia seeds in the planters. Not many of them came up, so I was really surprised to see volunteers all around the planters and across the front yard!

 

I don’t know what this plant is, but it’s perennial and it seems to really like it in this planter.

 

Phlox and periwinkles.

 

Two colors of impatiens, plus phlox about to bloom and iris.

“When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

 

 

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April 27, 2017 · 2:51 pm

Flowers – Part II

I showed you pictures of the new plants I planted on our deck. I took some pics a couple of days ago of the flowers I just planted in the rest of the yard, plus a couple of others I wanted to share with you. The planting is all finished now, with the exception of nestling some hummingbird flowers seedlings into the deck pots –

My husband’s clematis. This year they’re really giving us a nice show.

 

On one side of the front portch, we have fuchsia impatiens,  neon orange impatiens, phlox, and some iris. We have an evergreen bush on the other side of the porch in the same kind of tall planter, the fuchsia impatiens, some phlox, etc.

 

I did this mosaic gazing ball a couple of years ago. This pot is on one side of our driveway. I planted some periwinkles around the edge of the pot.

 

One of four gerbera daisies.

 

Lavender stripy petunias.

 

‘violas’ or what I call bright happy pansy type flowers.

 

Periwinkles in our emu planters, plus phlox and periwinkles in the pot at the bottom of the pic.

 

This pot is on the other side of the driveway from the one above.

 

The ‘thing’ at the top of this pic is an old computer. The birds like to build nests inside. The flowers are fuchsia purslane/yubi/portalaca, and then we have phlox and periwinkles in the square planter.

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April 3, 2017 · 1:44 pm

Trip Around the Yard

My husband has three clematis plants he’s trying to nurture. This year they seem to be happy. Were walking around the yard this morning and found these.

 

Our purple iris are still blooming nicely in clumps around the yard while yellow iris are just now starting to bloom.

 

These are growing down one side of the driveway. There are a couple more ‘drifts’ further on down, but this is the main one.

 

This is one of our Rio Samba rose bushes. I cut them back harshly this past year because of various problems. I didn’t know whether they would live through my efforts or not. One of them didn’t, but two of them did.

 

 

 

And the pale yellow iris have started.

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