Memorial Day......

The reflected sun light from the west is shown on the eastern clouds.  Rain is good.  Rain seems to be forever in our picture.

The new deck is ten feet farther southeasterly of the old one.  It gives me great views of the sky just like the old one.

The dark iris is in its second year of blooming for me.  The company that sold this variety called it “superstition” but I have seen it sold with other companies just collating it the black iris. It is so dark that it is hard to photograph.  Same problem with light on it as with the white ones. The kind of camera doesn't pick up the reflected light correctly. More will bloom and I will try to photograph it in an upright position.

It is fun watching someone else work. I met Ben for the first time officially as I made an effort to know him.  He is a young married man with a  young daughter and a younger boy. I described him working the other day and he had his young little guy and four year old daughter helping him while he was digging a hole. The brown lab was out there at the same time.  Ben was so patient with the three of them.  He started on Saturday remaining a woven wire fence and he is replacing it with a wood fence.
In this shot the holes are dug and he has the poles down in the holes ready for them to be set. The yard he is against is the guy north of us but we will enjoy seeing it as my neighbor doesn’t want us to share a fence. As of Sunday night he had ten of the poles set in with concert at the base of the hole. I bet he finishes up today.

Nest year these iris will look good against that new fence. Ben is a carpenter and does’t know flowers. He asked if this was an orchid.  I told them people refer them to be orchid like in appearance but they really were hybrid iris.

I brought two different diggings of this iris down from the old place.  One set didn’t do so well but this other one surprised me yesterday blooming out all of a sudden. It is of the same variety of the small yellow iris a the markings on the falls are the very same pattern.  It had grown along the driveway at the old place.  I took a single rhizome of it from the Murray Cemetery.  The piece was about the size of the length of my thumb and I remember exactly where I found it growing. It took it a few years to get establish but now it has moved to the new place. It is my favorite of the kind of iris. I do think that I lost one of the kinds in my collection as I don’t have the yellow and brown anymore. I bet I could go to any old cemetery in the area or at Murray and find it blooming.

As soon as I finish writing this blog I am going out to put in these marigolds.  The white one is blurry in the shot.  It will be muddy but I will get them in the ground anyway.  We had rain again last night.  We  had rain again this morning.  Farmers are not getting things planted now for a full week. I put in tomatoes a couple of days ago in the mud and they seem to be doing well.  Lots of sun and lots of rain makes the tomatoes happy.

My AsianSunday school class is made up of Cambodian and Vietnamese high school boys.  They were born here but their parents and grandparents were not.  I did a history lesson with them about Memorial Day yesterday.  One boy did know the date of one of the first wars being the Revolutionary War. The World Wars and Korean War were unknown to them and the Vietnam War was not so fresh in their mind.  They know that their grandparents fled their country by swimming down rivers among dead people heading to Thailand. I tell them that story often.  I also told them about my dad surviving the Battle of the Bulge, with 55,000 Americans losing their lives in the particular battle.  I was hoping that the boys would have more of an understanding of the holiday and that it wasn’t just a day off from school or work. If it means just remembering a history it is better than not caring or knowing at all.

As we remember those who have served, those who have died in battle and those who are still alive from war, I hope that there is some understanding of what the holiday is truly all about. I wish you all well out there and thanks for stopping by today.
Me