Tuesday's Here.......

Again, I am up and get to see the sunrise. It is after the rain that we had with residue clouds everywhere.  I will have to surprise my followers by walking across the street one morning and get the full view before the corn gets to be too tall.

The buds hung on for a very long time and finally overnight after the rain the one bud opened.  It is a new hybrid that I picked up at Wally World and I never remember what I pick up when it comes to the colors.  In fact, the selection of colors at that store are so limited.

It was definitely worth the wait.  I at first thought it was just like the other hybrid on the other side of the house. Now I can see it is more blue in the standards, not lavender, and the falls are light blue and not white.  That really is a definite difference.  If I had planted them beside each other they maybe would have more easily not be confused.

I just thought now that I should go back into my archives and see if I photographed the packages that they came in when I purchased them.

This pink is struggling where it is planted but I know that it will regroup and start showing better formed flowers. I will remove the foliage that is crowding it and give it more light.  It is growing in the shaded part of the house. I will call them pinks for a while because dianthus can get to be daunting in spelling it correctly. My mom called the pinks and blog friend Mildred reminded me of it when she called them that in a comment.

The wild roses that grow in the garden are all but done blooming for the season.  I remember seeing these as a kid, growing on the edge of timbers and along corn fields.  It was pretty magical to see them as a kid as I thought roses had to be a very special flower.  Now that I own some of it and it grows freely I still feel that way. 

I need to go  photograph the William Baffin rose today.  I hope the rain has not bothered it like it has the peonies. The very old fashion peonies are now on the ground.  Others like the red ones seem to be a little tougher but I am hoping sunshine will help them stand up again. I have lots of buds on the peonies so I know the next ones to bloom will be in good condition.  I will face bugs and mosquitoes now as I go out to photograph.  The last time I looked at the William Baffin rose has more blooms on it that it ever has since I bought in 12 years ago.

We are off today to do some light shopping.  We will pick up a sandwich and return for a restful afternoon.  Being home everyday now seems to be unreal.  I have a major project to get started with the senior photos and a couple of frame jobs haunting me.  I will be on them all this week.  We have more rain forecasted but it isn't too last long.  

I know you can't tell it from my writing but I am upset about my Yahoo mail.  I lost all my past mail from many years ago as of 3:00 on Sunday.  I don't know for sure what happened.  I have some suspicions.  Yahoo claims to have a recovery program.  We will see how that works.  I have all my contacts but there is a lot of info from people that I still refer to in my mail. I am able to look up one person and pull up their mail from the past to dig out info.  I am beyond feeling about it now.  I don't know what I am going to do. I am just going to wait for the yahoo people to speak to me.

I am done for today.  Thanks for stopping by today.

Memorial Monday......

My true white peony is blooming now.  It looks like I will have the grand total of two blooms. I will photograph them a lot and appreciate them as if I had dozens.  I got this peony from the neighbor across the street.  He has a long row of them that were planted by many owners before he came along.

When I bought my property 40 years ago there was one row of peonies next to the drive.  Since then I have added two red ponies from my mom which where my grandmother's from Murray, Iowa.  New peonies added recently were historic peonies from my wife's home formerly her grandparents home.  Two out of the four of them are red peonies.  The other two are a great color that borderlines being red but maybe called deep pink. I donated one of my red peonies to a neighbor to put over the spot where her dog was buried.  It didn't bloom this year but it sure will next year as peonies really are hard to kill.

My tomato plants have been in the ground since a few weeks ago.  They looked pathetic.  They became yellow from probably too much rain and not enough heat.  I noticed Sunday that this one plant was ready to take off and grow. It looked green and healthy. Some sunshine and heat really brought it back.

I mowed and collected grass clippings today and they now are the mulch around all those tomatoes.  For my plans being not having many tomatoes, I have 12 planted next to the fence row in the backyard.  I added about 10 more today in my old planting area. I started lots of seed and the neighbor lady didn't take many of them this year.  She relies on her neighbor to do all the planting.  The one who plants for her goes out and buys big tomato plants from the nurseries. I hope I have lots of tomatoes and it is fun to give them away to friends.

I keep finding the dianthus plants that I had rescued from a planter.  Stores sell them by the half dozen so I should find them planted in 6 different places.  This one is taking in the shade of the hosta in the early morning.  It will be in full sun by afternoon.

The bright sun makes the flowers look white when it reflects off of some of the flowers.

The rescued white iris was a small rhizome I planted here.  That makes the fourth spot that I placed the white iris.  You can see here a different color of dianthus.

I am awaiting to see what colors this iris will be.  I don't know what I planted there but I will welcome it to my garden whatever color that it is.  It has been in this bud stage for a few days now and I thought sure it would be opened today. Maybe overnight it will start to unfurl.

Three day weekends are great.  I just don't know what to do with that extra day.  It doesn't feel like Monday but I just like it as I can start getting some yard work done. I probably won't write things down but I will do things as I see them.  I have a lot of iris that just didn't bloom this year.  They will be moved somewhere. I now can put them on the south side of the house as I found it was a good place to grow iris.

I thank you for stopping by on this Memorial Day.  Everyone take care.

Saturday's Retreat.......

Have a good day.

Stuff and More Stuff

I shared this iris a few days before with its standards smashed down from the rain. These standards are a little better but they seem in bad form from the last nights rain. I am hoping that next year this iris will turn into a taller stemmed iris

The rains helped to get these peonies opened. The weather has kept me from getting any good photos of it.  The dull light really keeps me from taking photos and the red peony is hard to photograph in low light or too bright of light.

The peonies that I moved from the farm three years ago are all slower bloomers than my other plants.  I think out of the four of them that three are red peonies.

 This is an old fashioned iris that I took from the school.  The science teacher at the new high school landscaped the building bringing in old iris from his house.  I have had this a couple of years but I think it is the first time that it has bloomed.

One of these similiar kinds of iris that I had was an almost pure cream to white iris.  The top standards were translucent white with cream colored falls. I lost that iris and will be keeping my eyes our for it to add to my collection again.

I will finish by sharing this photo of a successful story of a change in the garden location.  This iris bloomed in an area each year with short stalks and seemed not to be robust.  I moved it last year and I have this very tall stem with these buds on them. I left some of it in the old location and that plant is going to be moved now for sure.

Yesterday's partial blooming now looks like this. This cemetery iris is so close in design as the bumblebee iris shown below. This one though has the white edges on its falls which the bumblebee does not have. The beard and line markings are very similiar.  We keep getting rain.  It is good as remember those summers when I would only get one or two blooms per iris because it was too dry.  This summer we have all the moisture that we need.

We ran errands this morning and this afternoon I have lots of small jobs to do.  I hope all have a great weekend.   Thanks for stopping by at my blog today.

The Friday Finish.........

A formal portrait of this new iris was taken yesterday morning. I am glad that I took time to capture it as the continue rain and wind has the whole stem now leaning onto the adjacent ferns.

The dianthus are really enjoying the rains and have spread since last years planting.  I have discovered four different places where I have planted them.  A good gardener would have put them in the ground all in the same area but mine are scattered. Maybe I will consider moving some of them closer together after their first bloom time is over.

I did get a chance to take shots of these iris in more of a natural light.  The lavender standards looks like the real color in this photo. I see now that I didn't get the spent bloom snapped off of the stem before I took the photo. The size of these are small compared to a hybrid but the colors make it look like a bigger iris than it is.

A William Baffin rose bud looks like a big rose.  It really is a climber and the buds open up to a standard size for climbers.  The red is a deep color here as I had to shade it with my body from the bright sun.

I am at work this afternoon for the last day of school The person I am replacing is one who has to be in Kansas City for a wedding.  The last day of school was pushed back one day so it landed on her wedding plans.  Anyway, they are letting her leave a half day early and I will be sitting with her afternoon kids.  School is done about three days ago as staff get all finals over with early.  They need grading time and recording time.  The middle school is being remodeled this summer so the past few days the staff has had student help to unload all furniture from their classrooms.  The gym is full of designated areas for each classroom to put their things.  Air conditioning, new ceiling panels, and new floor covering will be going in too.  Today is the last day for the students to help carry everything away to storage.  I can not imagine how all that stuff will get put into the rooms with a small janitorial staff. I am hoping my IFS room that I am in today will already be cleared.  We will just sit on the floor and talk.

We are going through monsoon weather in Iowa as it just doesn't stop raining.  We have had a downpour most of the morning and it has stopped for now leaving the day looking gray. I thank you for stopping by today.

Thursday's Things.....

It takes a few years to get a grouping of these that fill in the whole area.  The flag iris don't seem to be bothered by them and are up before the hostas are full up.  The globe allium is planted here too and it all shares the space well.  I have some weeding to do here as the bird feeder gives me volunteer plants.

This hosta came from a crowded area and I now see that I need to move the rest of it.  I planted it here and by the second year the leaves are large. They took all summer in the crowded area to get much size on them.  The photo was taken by the iPhone and the sun is lighting things up for me.

Another cemetery iris that blooms later than most of the others. It is a small iris and has the same patterns on its falls as the Bumblebee iris does. I didn't get completely true color with the camera.  I will try to get out and get it with better light and not high sunlight.  The falls are purple and the standards are more blue than lavender.

The Bumblebee started blooming earlier but is still blooming. Here you can make the comparisons yourselves of the two iris blooms.

In the early sunlight I captured this rose again with its neighboring iris. Everything was wet this morning as we had a storm.  We did not sign up for this but at 2:40 this morning our phone rang to gives us a severe storm warning. I don't know if this is something a local tv station has done but we have been put on a list to be awakened for storms.

The white iris that I rescued from the ditch and sidewalk people has done well in its four new homes.  It was huge out at the corner of the road and I broke it up in parts and scatter planted it. The iris was given to me and it is one tough plant putting out so many large blooms.

I was surprised to see that I could work today, so I am at the middle school again today.  The job had been posted at 5 in the morning and at 6:30 no one had taken it.  I just didn't think there was going to be absent teachers the day before school is out but there actually are two people gone.  Another teacher is gone because their mother is bad.  The one I am subbing for is a mystery. I really had planned to be home to work outside but that just didn't happen.  I guess we will have more storms this afternoon when I get out of school.  Thank you for all of you who stop by the blog.  I hope your day is a good one.

Middle of the week......

Barney is resting as I keep him company outside. If I have work to do in the backyard he will go over and lay in the grass and stay out with me.  If I go inside, he must go inside.  Paranoia of being alone is the problem. I have made a make shift ramp for him to use and he has yet to try it because it is of white wood and that is scary I am sure.  I am letting him live with it as he continues to jump up on the platform to go up the stairs right next to it.  I do believe his back legs are better.  We are trying to get some weight off of him but he doesn't like the idea.

I found the squirrel in the basement and brought him outside.  I have tossed a lot of my broken ones but this guys seems to be in perfect shape. The real squirrels are few in number now that the big trees are gone.  The one younger squirrel gets hungry and eats on the wood of the corn holder.  When he does that I rush out with more shelled corn for him at the one feeder.

The angel lady is out again this year but she has a new location to occupy.  I have her on the pedestal, which can't be seen very well, and will be surrounded by phlox blooms and foliage. The  original location that she sat in for years really wasn't thought through. If I get my act together I will get her basket sprayed with a new color for the summer.

This is the bloom from the bud that I shared earlier this week.  I could drive around town and see peony bushes in full bloom but up until yesterday that I had my first bud open. When I think of old fashioned flowers I think of this variety with its petal formation around the center of the bushy petals. I can still see these that grew around old farmhouses in southern Iowa.

Anything can be a flower if you allow it to bloom.  The yellow flower is from the fallen seed of the bird feeder.  I don't know what it is but I let it live.  Once the blooms are spent I then pull it. There are some grasses that I do pull as well as the nyjer seed plants.

I am the librarian today on an early out day.  I will be spending my day collecting book finds and checking in books. There are less students as the seniors are graduated and gone. It is gone to be a warm day in this end of the building and the down pouring rain comes and goes regularly.   We should have no ponds that are lacking in water nor will the lakes be low on water.

I thank you for stopping by today.  

Tires and Roses.......

The tires are in temporary storage.  They came from the farm.  I will have them out of there within the next month. I need to unmount the tires from the rims before I can recycle them.  I then have to take all the metal rims to a metal recycle place west of here.

The rose is why I posted the photo though, as the William Baffin is doing well this spring. Most of the plant grows to the left of this pile of tires but the one branch does decorate the area.

I bought this rose many years ago when we once visited the north shore of Minnesota. The garden center was a place on the hill outside of Grand Marias.  I think they had a blue moose on their sign.  I figured if William Baffin could survive northern Minnesota then it could grow here at my place with our harsh winters.

I am predicting that this will be my first bloom. I don't understand why other people in town have their peonies in full bloom butmine are not.  We had a very hard rain last night wich might help to open this bud.  When I opened the door to see how hard that it was raining we were getting a real downpour. We had a little water in the basement but it was minor.

 I was surprised and glad to see this iris blooming.  I had moved it last summer and it did survive the move. It is a very decorative variety but this one variety seems to be very short.  I have seen the same colors on tall hybrids. For some reason two of the vertical parts of the flower are not there. They are inside of the falls when it develops so I can not understand how this happens.  There is one more bud on the stem and maybe it will be more normal looking.

I will close down this blog by sharing this photo I took in the math room the other day. I think it was a cheap shelving unit and the pegs that hold the shelves just were not strong enough.  The whole wing of that building gets a complete remodeling this summer so I am assuming the teacher will be boxing it all to move it out. He figures why do it now.

I am home today and will find lots of things to do.  It is very wet outside but if we get up to the predicted 80 degrees F.  it will dry out. Friday is the last day of school  and I did pick up work for that last day.  I may not get any more other than that.   It will be officially summer for me.

I hope all is well with each of you and thank you for checking in on me today.

Monday's a Good Start to the Week.

Before the rains I took this photo because after the rains they won't look this good. This is the best that this flag iris has done for me.  I had it on the other side of the fence for a few years and had maybe one or two blooms.

A new photo of the same old iris.  It seems to have more yellow color on its falls. The lean is sort of the natural view of this one plant so I didn't try to compensate it by straightening it.

Button gets me up early in the morning and my reward is to see the sunrise.  I really would like to sleep until it is really daylight but there is this trade off.  The sun now is coming up far to the left of this photo.

I gave my neighbor a planting of this and it has spread into a big planting.  I was jealous of it and then noticed yesterday that I still have it.  I pulled it from another part of the garden as a rescue and it is blooming now. My mom had this all along the garage down in Osceola. I am sure she bummed it off of a neighbor as when they moved to the house there was nothing planted there.  The deep colors of this iris are actually deeper and darker than the photo shows.

I keep taking photographic records of this iris.  Those who follow me regularly have heard this story or description before about this specific iris.  It is the one iris they first used to create the  hybridize iris.  Today they may use another source but this is the original genetic branch.  I remember this iris from years ago when I first went to different cemeteries with my family. 

I am half day working today in the English middle school room. It will be nice to head home for lunch and work outside this afternoon.  That work will be dependent on the weather as rain is being forecasted.  There is no rain right now so maybe they got it wrong.  Thank you for stopping by today.

Sunday and Partly Sunny....

Some how in the madness of my procedures I planted these two iris together. I am too old to remember when I did such a thing but it proves to work out just fine.  The smaller yellow cemetery iris is matched up to this very large purplish iris.

This iris is the largest one of all my iris. The comparison on the above shows you how big and this photo makes it look like a made a close up of it.  It really is very large.

Here is the top view of it.  It really looks contorted when you shoot ii from up above. I am impress as to how well these both plants grow together and under the river birch tree. Both varieties keep on spreading and I am glad.

This be comes a pink and blue blog now with this fuller bloom of my pink multi flora. The shot was taken in full sun so it does give the pink color a real glow.

I worked in the garden most of the time yesterday but I forced myself to get this mat cut for a  customers print. My biggest problem with framing these days is the starting of the job.  I just decided I couldn't go outside until I cut that complicated mat.  I succeeded and that was goo as I only had the one piece to use.  I would have gone back to the store if I screwed it up.  I have frame lined up to be cut down and I do have to go by foam core backing as we are all out of it.

It is Sunday and we tend to do similar things every Sunday.  No special plans today other than getting a sandwich and coming home from church. I have a half day job tomorrow morning.  That will be my last possible Monday to work for this school year.  I am looking forward to getting the summer off.  Thank you for stopping by today.