Rainy Days Are Needed.........

My first iris bloom snapped of when I braked to quickly while driving.  The bunch tipped over and the bloom detached from the stem.

As an experiment I brought home some buds from the first iris to bloom.  I wanted to see if they will continue to develop and bloom out for me. Time will tell if it can happen. I think I remember doing that before but only the top one or two buds will open and there others below that will die. I have about three iris that have set buds already and I will be sharing those pictures as it happens.

I seem to be experimenting most of the time when I garden.  This rock garden of the former owners is boring.  I used a garden hoe and dragged out a lot of rock to make a hole for planing.  I dumped good garden soil in the hole as I planted the hosta plants. The hosta plants had perked up more this morning from yesterday afternoons planting.  I think that hosts will probably growing into rocks along with the soil I used.

When my dad first starting his hobby of cutting and polishing rocks he cut into a lot of strange things. The rock was from our southern Iowa farm.  It is an agatized rock and is big and heavy.  I had it in my garden at the old house and now moved it. The unusual thing from this story is that my dad took the time to saw off that flat shape on the side of the rock. That had to be a long time of cutting and the noise had to be awful. I don't think I have that slab of rock from the cut but I have never looked for it.  I will have to keep my eyes open as I work with some of his pieces in the new house.

I planted the two hosta plants in this small area for now.  I am not certain what the plant is that is on the right but it might me a coneflower.

I wanted to move specific peony starts from ones that I have at the old house. They are ones which are from family.  My grandmother'r red peony and some of the peonies from my wife's grandparents. I already have the fern leaf peony from my mom still in its bucket.  The previous owner was a great gardener and has planted in a row of seven peonies.  I will look them over after they bloom and may start a peony row in the back, down the hill, yard.  I know I need to cut back and will do so on the number of things that I have. I have two large  tilled squares of garden that were used as vegetable gardens. The one boxed garden will continue to be that but the other one may be an eventually planned flower garden. I am putting plants in there now temporarily until I can make sense of all of it.

I will be working at the new house today.  We have rainy weather so the lawn will have to wait for another day for its mowing.  I have so much to do in the house and things in the garage to take down to the basement for storage.  The arrangement of the basement is still in limbo until the new floor in the office/studio has been installed.  I won't write about that for now.  Maybe Thursday or Friday it will happen.  I need to call the number one flooring company in Iowa and ask how many crews do you have and why one of them can't come in and do this simple job.  They do seem to make sure they get paid even though they don't worry about delivering the results.

Thanks for stopping by today.