sunnyvalley's blog: I blinked and now it's September!

Officially giving up on bi-weekly posts!

I have now reached the stage where I have to admit to myself that my plans for this season were just too ambitious! I have been so busy that I haven’t even had the energy to read the forum threads let alone make a new blog post! The summer is over and I still have a long list of things that I want to get done. One of the main reasons for my dilemma is the order I placed for 100 new iris! They arrived on 29 July and I had only prepared bed space for half of them so the rest had to be potted. They are still sitting in the driveway waiting to be planted. So I have decided not to attempt sticking to bi-weekly postings because it just adds to my self-inflicted stress which really defeats the object.

We were off work during the first three weeks of August and they went by in a flash. We used the time to renovate our entrance ...


DH started and finished the first of two new rose arches as well as making a couple of steel supports for my standard roses.


My battle with the new bed continued. The poison I sprayed didn’t kill all the grass roots so I landed up removing everything by hand anyway. DH laid the new lawn edging and I repositioned the border cable for the auto-mower. Then, loosening the soil, removing stones, tilling, removing stones, adding compost, removing stones, levelling off and removing stones once again! In total about 500kg!!! of stones had to be carted away!!! But I got there in the end and finally started planting some roses last week.


This year’s rose seedlings have also been taking up quite a bit of time – which to keep and which to cull???? So far 14 have made the grade and have been planted in the trial bed. There are still about 20 which I am observing but they still have a bit of convincing to do before I reward them with bed space!


All the pods from my iris crosses have been harvested. I landed up with a total of 1049 seeds from 20 crosses – goodness knows where I will plant all of them! I have also collected pollen to freeze for next season from the couple of re-bloomers which bloomed during the past two weeks. There are still a few stalks developing and I might even see more if the weather holds.
Eternal Bliss, Lovely Again, Jennifer Rebecca


Champagne Elegance, Low Ho Silver, Cantina


The first rose flush this year was most disappointing to say the least but they came around and rewarded us with more blooms during the second flush from mid to end of August. Whether or not the season will be long enough for a third flush this year all depends on the weather. I am hoping for a long mild autumn – hopefully all the way until December!!!!

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