It was not yet sixty degrees when the coffee was brewing at seven. Too cold to step out onto the patio and water the five roses in 24 inch pots. Too cold to spread yesterday's coffee grounds atop the ones I spread a few days back when I'd gotten up an hour or two later. Today's list of gardening tasks is fairly short, although it really should be longer. We'll water the garden outside the fence along the driveway - the one browsed by deer, rabbits, javelina, gophers, ground squirrels, and bugs. The new roses will, we hope, be deer proof at their full height; but that will be some years out and many gallons of Liquid Fence down the road. Then we'll review our seeds and see which ones to stuff into the tiny areas that have not already been stuffed with plants, saving some room to squeeze in the deep purple sweet potatoes that are on the way.
We have to save quite a bit of time to photograph the garden since we are approaching peak iris season.
An Unknown Iris (Dramatic Style?)
Probably Matt McNames
Presumed to be China Dragon
Clarence
At each moment the light changes. And the flowers change. One is lucky on the rare occasions when one is in the garden, the flowers are blooming, and the light is right. The more time I spend photographing the garden, the more surprised I am to get good shots every now and again. It means I have to go out into the garden a lot. And linger. But it's not so bad because some spots smell of apples and honey, a mixture of fragrance from the climbing rose Mme Alfred Carriere and the blue and white iris Clarence.
Mme Alfred Carriere piled atop an arch or two.
Clarence is well placed, but one of the great problems is that it seems like too many of the iris are simply in the wrong place. There are perfectly lovely iris with pastel flowers crammed up against California poppies which wash out their gentle colors. But once their flowers are gone it's too easy to forget which iris are which. And it's too late to move them. So we're trying the risky thing right now. When an iris is in the wrong place we are moving it: cutting off its flower stalks and a bit of its foliage and placing it in a better location. It's a little scary because the iris sulk in the new locations. Still, the more I think about it the more I know I must address this issue.
Gotta go move some iris...
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