Dairy Daze...and Now Beyond

 Yes, this one came from out of nowhere and bloomed first.  Actually it was the bloom above it, but the first bloom was damaged when I covered them to weather the frost.  There are a few of them that came on all at once now, but the yellow one was the next to open. I love this rich shade of yellow. Then this one bloomed.  But now I am not sure if this is the one they called "blue" or not.  If it is supposed to be blue, it falls a bit short of attaining that worthy goal. Then this one came along and surprised me: So far these are all the ones that have bloomed.  I need to get more colors.  I have my eye on an orange shade in one of the iris bulb catalogs.  Or I have thought of getting a white one. This one above wasn't one of Betty's irises that she'd given me a few years back.  This one was from the Maxwell house; the house my mom lived in when she came here, just up the road from us, sort of catty corner to Gail's place.  Florence Maxwe...

Every year it's always fun to see which iris will bloom first.  At first I thought it was a race between the yellow and blue one: The Yellow Iris   Or the Blue...  (I think this is supposed to be a "Blue" iris) I wish I'd taken the time to focus the camera.  Ellen always gets frustrated with me and my lack of camera skills.  Haha... And actually the yellow won between these two, but it was this one that came in first.  It just popped right out and surprised me.   Unfortunately it's a bit damaged because I covered all of them night before last. The temps got down into the lower 30s.  Gail's thermometer said 30 degrees, ours only said 32, but ours is under the carport, so it's probably not exact. There are quite a few blooms coming on, and after they did all that hard work to produce them, I didn't want them to get frozen, so I hauled out the old sheets.  Of course now the stems are a bit wonky, but that is OK, the blooms will be lovely an...

  All around me my neighbors have irises blooming...even as of over a week ago.  Here my irises are just now throwing up bloom stalks...or whatever they are called.  It looks like I will have quite a few blooms this year.  I am excited to see what they will give me. The irises blooming this Spring will be a bit bittersweet though.  Many of them were given to me by a precious lady from church.  Betty.  Betty loved her flowers; she always had lovely flower beds all around her house.  She had irises around her house, and down her drive, I believe.  In any case, quite a few years back I'd mentioned at a ladies meeting that I wanted to start growing irises, so she said she'd give me some when she separated hers in the fall.  I wish I'd written down all the different colors she gave me, but I quite remember she gave me yellow.  They are all so lovely.  About 2 years ago I bought myself 4 different colors of irises; two different "bla...