Settling in

Well, we are in and it is feeling like home. A small home, but not so bad.

I have learned to judge the traffic and make the call as to whether the highway or surface streets are the most efficient for the commute. The kitties are getting used to the sounds around us, no longer startling at the wind or the barking dogs in the trailerhood.

And, I have my iris in the ground!

I wasn't going to fool with them.

I had dug the special ones and taken them to safe haven at Dsis's house in CO. The only ones left were multiples of nameless clumps that were dry and ignored. It was the last trip to the house to pick up the kitties in their carriers and mop the entryway on my way out the door. I looked at the beds and grabbed a plastic dish pan and a grocery store plastic bag out of the back seat. I dug the plants with my bare hands and took them with me, thinking that I would get some big flower pots and put a couple in each.

The next day when I got home from work, I was thrilled to see that The Mister had fetched the planter boxes and had them installed and ready for planting!

I think that it is likely that I will have some bloom in the spring, since we have a couple more months of warm growing season ahead. We don't have irrigation here, so I will water them with the hose, but they are next to the sidewalk and I will pass them everyday, and that will remind me to give them a drink.

And by spring, maybe my hands and fingernails will have recovered from being used as garden implements!

Peak Bloom

I think that peak bloom in my little iris garden may be this week. Our highs are in the mid-80's and that really makes the blooms pop!

This year, all the plants are doing well. There is a palm tree between the planters and the sidewalk which gives a little shade, so even though it is a very small garden, there are micro climates, within.

Look at these party girls. I have not been able to track down the name of this one, but it has the most open blooms at once. Of course, that means it will be finished blooming earlier, but I am loving it while it lasts!

This is little 'Hell Cat'. It is the first one to bloom, and it is finished, already. It is one of my all time faves!

This is 'Spirit World'. This one does not always bloom. It is a little finicky, so I always appreciate it when I do get a bloom out of it. I probably shouldn't give it space, since it is so stingy, but it is so pretty!

This is another whose name escapes me. I know the face, I just can't put a name with it!

There are a few that still have no open blooms, so I should be able to enjoy them through next week, at least. Our spring is 'compressed' in the desert, so most people probably don't think it is worth the water that it takes all year, just for a couple of weeks of bloom. For me, though, it just wouldn't be spring without some iris!

Late Season Surprise!

This is Zandria!




Zandria is one of those really striking iris that all garden visitors notice and oooh and aaah over. Very velvety falls, and the bright orange beards really pop!

The bud looked a lot like Grape Snakez and it is growing next to GS, so I thought it was the same.

Until it opened!

The plant is a bit undersized and so is the bloom, but I was thrilled! Zandria has been a notoriously slow grower - slow to increase and kind of tender in my previous gardens. We always planted back several different clumps of Zandria, because the odds of them all surviving were pretty low.

I guess it just likes the heat!

It is the last of my iris to bloom this year. (I think that I have said that before the last two, but I really think this is it....) The timing couldn't be better, because soon, we leave on another road trip odyssey. The first destination is Dearest Sister's house!

I can't wait!!

Iris on Mother's Day

My mother and iris are always associated in my mind.





This is Grape Snakez ("snake eyes"). Please ignore the wheel of my neighbor's car...

For about 20 years, Mama and I shared an iris garden and a small 'business' that we made from it. The garden moved several times, as circumstance and life changes occurred. Sometimes it was in my yard, sometimes in hers.

It didn't start out to be a business. In 1987, we had some iris that were extra and we needed to find them homes. We took them to a local farmer's market in the hopes that someone might be interested in them. Mama had some photos that showed what a few of them looked like in bloom. We made tags for the rest of them with descriptions of height, color etc.

We were delighted that we sold the iris that we took that day and we realized that the ones in the photos sold very quickly, even though some of the others were really prettier iris!

That started the effort to take attractive photo's of all our iris.

It sounds easy enough, but the challenge was to have a freshly opened flower at a time of day without wind (a rare condition) and when the light was good. Then, we would take the roll of film to the one hour photo processing place, ideally in enough time to get the photos back the same day or a do-over if needed. Then we would go through the photos and see if they were 'true' colors and in focus, etc. If the iris were not shown to the best advantage, we would make a list of "re-takes", and wait for another fresh bloom, good light, etc.

The photo processing place got a bit of an education in iris, since if the prints were not the correct tone, Mama would ask them to re-do it to see if they could get it closer. Sometimes, she took a flower in with her to show them what color it should be...

My mother was a lifelong photographer and she gave me my first 35mm camera for a wedding gift. Whenever I take photos with my digital camera, I think about how much Mama would have LOVED having a digital camera! Even though she really liked slides, she would have loved being able to see how her photos looked immediately!

Our iris business grew from a way to justify spending way to much on our compelling need to buy several of the new introductions each year, to an fairly significant income supplement for us both. In later years, Ms A took over sharing some of the "heavy lifting" parts of the process when Mama couldn't do as much and financed a very nice cello with her part of the profits one summer.

Mama was known as "the iris lady" by lots of folks around town. She always had time to give advice or help someone dig and divide overgrown iris and show them how to re-plant them - "not too deep and at least a half day of sunshine".

After the market each Saturday, we would go have lunch and talk about the day. It was fun to see what we made and plan for the next weekend, but I think what Mama enjoyed the most was just visiting with folks about iris.

I never look at my iris, or any other, without thinking about Mama.

Happy Mother's Day, Mama

Grape Goodness!

I thought that this would be the last iris to bloom in my garden this year. I was happily surprised to see two more plants with buds coming up! Neither are labeled, but one of them is Quaker Lady, I am almost positive. The other one does not have a very distinctive bud shape, so we will see if I 'recognize' it when it blooms.


This is Grape, an old-fashioned 'flag'. The petals continue to stretch for a day or two after the flower opens and take a dog-tongue shape. Kind of ho-hum when you look at an individual bloom, but a clump with many fluttering petals is very nice. Especially when the fluttering petal give off a wonderful grape Kool-aid smell. If you don't remember what grape Kool-aid smells like, you would be instantly reminded after one whiff!

I have really been enjoying the spring flowers this year. Exploring the surrounding neighborhoods on foot have really given me a chance to observe things much more closely than I have in years past. In fact, the buds that I have noticed, have helped me maintain my motivation for my evening walks.

And that is a good thing!

Two of the last three...

These two iris are the last ones to bloom, except one.

This one is "Ruth Raymond Blue". It is not an officially registered iris. It is a spontaneous hybrid that my mother found in my Grandmother's garden, after the garden had been neglected for decades. Mother named it in honor of my Great Aunt Ruth. It is not a "points winner", but it is very hardy and vigorous and the color is really lovely. It is one of the family iris heirlooms.

This one we call "Purple Splash". It was an unregistered seedling that Mother and I grew for display in our garden. Our garden was on tour during the American Iris Society regional convention in 1999 and this variety was sent to us by the hybridizer to grow for two years before the garden tours. The hybridizer decided not to introduce it as a registered cultivar, but we continued to grow it. It is not a 'great' iris - the flowers bloom on stalks that are a little short and the flowers are a bit out of proportion to the plant, but the foliage is dark purple at the base, which adds a lot of interest after the bloom season.

I have one more iris with an unopened bud. It is either "Grape" or "Quaker Lady". Both are historic iris that have very small distinctive bud shapes and the traditional "flag" form. Grape smells exactly like grape Kool-aid! Quaker lady is a very graceful iris in shades of grey and violet. Not very showy, but it is beautiful in its own way and I love it.

This is my iris garden this week. Quite a change from last November!

I realize the climate here is very different from my Kansas garden, but having over 80% of my transplanted iris bloom the next season, especially after such a late planting was such a wonderful surprise!

Now, I just have to be sure to keep them alive through the summer heat!

Today's iris delight!

This iris has always been labeled "Celebration Song or Pastel Ribbons" in my garden.

I knew it was one or the other but I have never really looked it up to confirm.

Today, I decided to see if there were any photos in "Dave's Plant Files" that would end the question. I looked up Celebration Song first and it seems to be a good match. There were many photos that looked like this one.

So then I looked up Pastel Ribbons and there was one photo that also looked a lot like this one!

I really think it is Celebration Song so that will be the fresh label. I should say 'labels'. It turns out that three of my 16 iris are the same cultivar! Maybe I will need to share this one to make room for more varieties....Anyone think they might have room for a pretty little iris to plant next fall?

A New Iris!

As usual, I have iris in my garden that are labeled as one variety, but turn out not to be that variety! I am kind of a 'careless' gardener, in some ways. My mother always marked the plants and then made a map to show where each one was planted in relation to the others. After a year or two, the map wasn't always so useful, but with the combination of labels and map, we could generally figure out what was what.

Two years ago, I purchased two iris at the local iris club sale. This is the first one to bloom and it is not what the label says. It could be that I mixed them up, or they could have been mislabeled at the sale. Not all my iris have buds, so I won't know until next year if I have something else I don't recognize, or if I can solve the mystery.

If I don't figure it out, I will just call this one "Las Vegas Surprise!"

That Zany Tanzanian Tangerine!

Last November, I moved my poor neglected iris "box-gardens" from the side of the house to the front. (You can read about that process here.)

Today, the first bloom opened!

It is a variety named Tanzanian Tangerine and it is one of my favorites. It is a little tricky to photograph, because it is hard to capture the true color. It is one of the unique color patterns from hybridizer Brad Kasparek of Zebra Gardens in Utah.



In my Kansas garden, I would never have dreamed of having first year bloom on plants that were moved in November. In fact, I would have been skeptical of the plant's survival!

Here, though, I have seven out of eight plants in one bed with bloom stalks, and in the other bed, one stalk and lots of 'fat fans' that indicate a stalk down in the foliage. (The second bed gets a bit of shade from the palm trees, which explains the delay)

One of the plants with a big fat bud, is a variety that is new to me, purchased at the local iris society plant sale two years ago. I can't wait to see what it looks like 'in person'!

The wind is howling, so I hope I don't regret leaving the stalks in the garden. I just really enjoy sharing my iris with the rest of the world!

Gardening in the Desert (in November!)

I believe that I have mentioned that I am an iris "fancier". I brought a small number of iris with me to the desert and The Mister built me two "boxes" for them to live in.

The first year, we did not have the watering schedule quite right, but the second year, I had some lovely blooms.

The problem was, though, that I could only see the blooms if I went out the backdoor, around to the side parking area and walked behind whatever was parked there.
This is the view from beside the car trailer looking back between the pick-up camper and the cinder block wall. Not exactly a "garden setting"....


You can see that they look a little neglected. That is because they have been neglected!

The other bed looked worse!

That is because these guys have been eating the rhizomes (the fleshy part of the plant that stores all the energy for next years growth).

After the initial surprise of being thrown out of their comfy flower bed, they are pretty fast!

These two guys were racing back to the dirt.... for a minute...

Anyway, The Mister volunteered to move the boxes to the front yard.

Any gardening in the desert begins with this:

Once I saw an article in the paper about putting in a lawn. It began with, "First dig up your yard and take it to the land fill. Then buy some good dirt."

This is the new location. You can see that there is a large trailer parked cheek by jowl with the flower bed. In order to bring the plants, plant markers,the dirt, shovel, the soil amendments etc, it was necessary to put the ramp of the trailer down and open the side door. Then, I walked through the trailer and out the side door with each load. (The other option was through the kitchen and living room and out the front door.)

After another trip to the garden center for more soil, I got the plants in the ground.

It is still an odd feeling for me to be planting in November. In my Kansas garden, if the plants were not in the ground by Labor Day, or at the very least Columbus Day, it was iffy that they would make it through the winter. Here, they still have a couple of months for the roots to get established before winter.

Another thing that is different is that in my previous garden, I only watered once a week, or so, to get plants established. Then, if they couldn't make do with what mother nature provided, they couldn't stay in my garden.

Now, every plant gets its own little sprinkler!

I am really excited to have my flowers in the front yard where I can see them easily and share them with passers-by! I hope I have some photos of lovely blooms to share next year!

In my garden

Before I moved to the desert, I had a garden with lots of flowers, but mainly iris. (actually, hundreds of iris) When we prepared to move I tried to find homes for them with my neighbor, my garden club friends and, for the favorites, with Dearest Sister.

I brought a few (20 or so) with me, but our yard does not have much room to plant things. Most of it is covered with concrete, or rock with specimen plantings of shrubs and palm trees.

The Mister built a couple of planter boxes in the RV Parking side of the yard for the iris. Nothing like the place of honor along the front walk of our old yard, but a place for my old friends.

Our back "yard" and I use the term loosely, has a wall that separates our yard from the yard behind us has a lovely vine growing on it.

Our first spring, we were delighted to see the flowers that appeared!




After the flowers, there were little green berries! Imagine our surprise when we returned from a fall vacation to this!




They turned a bright red-orange in the ten days or so that we were away.

I still miss the plants and flowers of the mid-west, but I am learning the flowers and plants in this dry, harsh environment and learning to appreciate them more as each season passes.