Last but Not Least

 Here's the last iris to bloom in my yard.

It's that deep dark purple that I thought I didn't have.

It was worth the wait.

Housing Shortage

 Our area has a housing shortage.  That’s why I can’t understand why there are vacant houses on our road.

On my walk today besides capturing this view of a gigantic field which in the past has been planted in corn but this year has something else growing …

… I captured the rhododendrons at this vacant house. 

I have heard it is owned by folks out of state. Possibly an inheritance. I’ve seen them there once. Otherwise it stands empty and decaying slowly. What a waste. 

But the rhododendrons are gorgeous!

Then there’s this house just 4 houses down from us. It’s been vacant since before we moved here. The rich folks who bought the farm bought it. Not clear what they intend. I believe that zoning requires that if you tear down a house it has to rebuilt on footprint within a year. I think there’s asbestos so that requires removal. 

All this was posted from my phone. 

It's That Time

 Weather has cooperated so all the farmers are haying their fields.  The field behind our house is being finished today.

There are two tractors out there today.  One is fluffing the cutting into long mounds and the other is gathering it into rounded bales.  This is different from other years when they did rectangular bales.

There's a strip of grass they never mow between us and the field.

Iris Thanks

Thank you to whoever lived here before and planted these peach iris. I looked back at my journal and discovered they had bloomed my first spring here in 2021. The clump below was planted here by me and judging from the numbers of blooms they love the spot.

Below are some in probably their original spot.  At least I think these will be the same color.

Thank you to Joy down the street who brought me a sack of tubers when I admired her yellow ones.  Here's the first bloom of this season.

Thank you to Vicki who sent me tubers to her white iris. Last year they were set to bloom but hit with frost.  This is the first spring I get to see their blooms.

Next year will be an even bigger display.

A thank you to Debbie the mother of a good friend of my daughter Sarah.  When she and her daughter visited here to see Sarah in June 2021 she brought these lovely light blue Siberian iris (or are they Japanese iris?).  I planted them in a temporary spot and last year moved them to an expanded deck garden where they get full sun. 

The last thank you goes out to my late mother in law who in 2006 gave me a bag of iris tubers to plant at our new home, The Lodge.  When we moved from there in 2016 Sarah took tubers from the garden and planted them at her apartment. I helped her move them to their backyard when they moved to their first house.  Then when they moved to Buffalo I took some and temporarily planted them in a raised bed at the retirement home set aside for residents.  In June 2020 I dug them up and we drove them to Buffalo where Sarah and family had moved to a new house after a short stint in an apartment.  I planted them for her.

When we moved here to a house I took some tubers from Sarah's garden in 2022 or 23.  Below is the first blooms I have had from these well traveled tubers.

Below are the iris I planted at Sarah's in Buffalo 4 years ago.  Look how they spread. I have the light purple one but would also like the deep purple one.  

When I collected tubers from her they were no longer in bloom.  

She has one of these in a pot which she will share with me.

Have iris well traveled.