Sun Behind the Clouds....

In the early morning there was sun but now the clouds have moved it. It doesn't look promising but the clouds could clear by this afternoon.

It is a gray that doesn't comfort the soul. Gray on gray and we have cool temperatures this morning.

The bright spot in the clouds is welcomed as maybe there is hope for sun.  It was strange as to how hot it became last week and now we are back to cool.  When I mow tomorrow I really don't want to wear a coat to do the job.

The knock our roses look healthy but only one out of the three is blooming. I am thinking this rose is a different kind than the other two as the bloom is a more simple kind. I will have to wait and see when the other two.  I have been here three years and I would have thought I would have noticed that before now.

The dianthus did survive the winter and are putting out new blooms. I usually have hardy geraniums or petunias planted in this front garden but I won't be at the store for awhile.

This red peony grows out in the front yard.  I didn't plant this one.  It is different than my grandmother's red peony.  I will have to take a photo when that one does bloom.

The old fashion peony is doing well.  I moved it to that location a couple of years ago as a small sprig.  I have four peonies in a row here but only two of them will bloom this year. Next year there should be four strong plants.

We had church on television via the internet this morning. Our church has opened up but it is limited in numbers divided into three services.

The guy built the fence last summer and I now know why. He is digging a hole for a swimming pool.  I wasn't going to take a lot of photos but I did snap this one.  I see a grandson is sitting on his grandpa's lap enjoying the backhoe machine. They are working on it again this morning trying to smooth things out for the pool. It is going to be a big pool.

I hope every one is staying safe out there.  We are staying inside for now and maybe forever. Thanks for stopping by today.

Saturday

It was slow to bloom but then now they areall open.  It is an old fashion peony that I brought from the old place. It has the history of being on an a property that was first developed in 1904.  When they planted the peony I would not know, but plants like this were shared from property to property.  This now grows on a property that was established in 2003 of which it was a corn field.

We had peonies down on the farm in southern Iowa.  They were always used for decorating graves on Memorial Day.  Everything has bloomed late this year as this peony missed it by a week. I have a red peony planted on my parents grave so they would just now start to bloom.  I forgot southern is early that where I live so they are probably already in bloom and probably almost gone.

I have two planting spots of this cemetery iris I had forgotten and was glad to see one of the buds unravel and bloom. I had pulled the grass out from around it recently so it is looking good.  I have no more different kinds of iris to bloom this year.   I have two iris that have to be moved as they were planted too close to redtwig dogwoods bushes.  When I planted them the shrubs had been trimmed back and were not to close at the time.  Now the two iris just didn't bloom.

This is either sage or salvia. It is a good color but really isn't in full bloom yet. I see others are planted all around our community.

 The knock out roses are full of buds this spring. It looks really great once they all get in bloom.

I worked hard mowing the old place yesterday so I am having a day off. I could mow today but I am just not going to do it yet. The neighbor north has mowed.  I will watch to see what the other guy is  doing. I survived  shopping for food yesterday. I was surprised that it wasn't so busy. Our meat really is becoming scarce or should I say minimal. We had one plant that withheld its numbers of virus carriers. When we heard 556 out of 2000 or more  workers  it was sad.  That is the last of our meat packing places to get reported. I guess that means we will just keep staying home.
Thanks for stopping by today.

Iowa Wild Rose.....

I mowed at our old place today cleaning up the orchard area and the back yard.  I had been rained out so I couldn't finish it. This rose grows freely in our back yard.  It is a wild rose and grows in the wild in timbers and ditches of our rural roads. It is a delicate flower.  I saw alot of it growing in Minnesota and also saw it growing next to a light house in Maine along the Atlantic Ocean. I keep eing tempted to bring some to the new place but it is just too invasive. I could see it coming up in my neighbors yard having spread under a fence.

Leaning next to a river birch at the old place is this old wheel. You can see that I don't have time to clear all wild things around and away from the base of the tree.

The peony is almost opened in this photo.  I need to go take new phots as it looks like three of these are now in bloom.

The white iris here is doing the spread while the wind is blowing.

I stole a shot through the fence of one of my neighbors pale blue iris.  It is a stunning flower. He has his iris well tended with rock and liner around them to keep them easy to maintain.

We just returned from a trip to the hospital again to day for our friend's treatment.  As she says we all have the weekend off and then it starts again on Monday.

My mowing this morning was very difficult as it was tall and thick.  I had to go slow as it was just to thick.

Thanks for stopping by today. Stay safe.......and strong.

Thursday's Things.....

It is an old fashion variety.  I think this is the one I think of when I think of traditional iris.  The origin is unknown ffor me but I bet I got it from my parents place in southern Iowa.

The vine is called honeysuckle. It looks totally different than the variety i have at the old place.  It has the pink to red flowers.  It has really liked getting all of the rain and shows it with all of the blooms. The flowers remind me of the old fashion trumpet vine I would see growing along old farm houses in southern Iowa.

This tomato plant is on its own now.  It isn't very big but the sun will warm the soil and it will just take off. I count 14 of them that I planted. I could have bought commercial green house plants but these will catch up.  I have the problem of having a large amount of plants still in the starter pots that I will probably have to toss.  I don't know who I can give them away at this time.

I need to insert that we have moved into hot weather.  I mowed yesterday afternoon and was huffing and puffing. I didn't realize that it had warmed up to 81 degrees, F.  I am so use to wearing a coat while mowing so I didn't realize I wasn't over tired but over heated. 

I collected grass yesterday and spread it around all the plants.  It works really well for mulch and it made the bed look like a disaster.  We got a rain in the night again and the tomatoes will really grow big now. I saw the neighbor lady on her balcony  and told her I got our tomatoes planted. She knows that I will be sharing a lot of them to her on the fence top railing.

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My wife had a conference call with her doctor yesterday so I went into the back yard for a while.  I discovered that I usually pull water grass out of the iris and it was time to do so.I really didn't get all of the grass pulled but you can see the trail I left behind.

The mower with the grass collector helped me clean up the scraps. It was nice to get that done.  I need to return but we have rain this morning.  I don't like working in wet grass. My neighbor saw that I was rained out at the old place on Wednesday so he finished up my mowing in the street's ditch. I am sure he watched me load my mower up in a down pour leaving in defeat.  I really had mowed most everything that made it look good just not all of it. 

We have a new house in our backyard view.  It was fun to see the father and grandfather assemble this play set.  The boy is about three years plus and he was having to stand inside of their sliding glass door to watch it being built. I am sure dad or granddad decided that it would be best for him not to get hurt while they worked.

Later the little boy was up on the floor and really exploring the area.  Later then the dad was sitting up in the tower with his son.  It would have made a great photo but I I know that I couldn't do that. This house actually balances out the view of the playhouse on the other side of the fence.


Our friend needs us to take her to treatment sessions the next two days.  I want to work outside this morning but it has to dry out first. More lifting of bricks and straightening of edges of the patio.  I will be glad to get it done. Thanks for stopping by this Thursday.

Stay Safe Some More.....

This came from a grab scrap box that Sally brought to school. She lives in the Homestead area near Granger, Iowa.  It was the first  in history of government building project in the United States, built for the Italian coal miners. They built them a house, barn and gave them land for a cow, horse and chickens.  Also encouraged to grow their own food.

We have been getting plent of rain. I don't have a gauge right now but this wheel barrow is not an accurate measure. I washed my hands in the water as I was working on the pavers. The limestone material didn't feel good on my hands. The mud at the bottom was distributed by me.

We had four different tornadoes develop again yesterday in an area near our old house.  They stayed west of our area by about ten m

I saw these blooming in cemeteries where ever I would go.  I have a book on iris and it is older than what I thought it was.  I called it an old cemetery iris but it really was created in Switzerland many years ago.  I guess it was brought over as people would move into this country. The book describe the variety to a tea as it does grow very dense and has multiple buds on single stems. The lemon standars with a white almost transparent falls with that unique pattern.

It is a small bloom compared to the medium iris and hybrid iris.  Behind is another one of my cemetery iris of which I can't get a focesed picture.

It is interesting how the lines on the falls are similar or maybe the same on these two kinds.I can tell you the exact spot in the cemetery where I rescued one small rhizome from a very large growth area of these iris. When they get too large by their spreading the mower people mow into them to keep them from spread too far.  The white one from above was growing further don the lill and it had spread the length of two or three graves.

. This cemetery iris is pale in color but has all the history of being at a cemetery for many years I don't know whee I collected this one.  I do know that it grew next to my basement stairway.

I don't have two others that are light white standards and darker blue falls and the other is yellow standards with brownish red falls.

I pulled water grass out from around the iris this morning.  I didn't get done but I did get a lot of it pulled. I will share a photo of what it looked like with all the water grass laying all around the area.

I have some iris that were planted next to dogwoods and the shrubs now are shading them too much.  I will move them later on as I have seen those two bloom last year

Thank you for stopping by today. I will be mowing here at the new place as the grass has grown tall. It is getting hot out there but I can get maybe half of it done today.   Until tomorrow, stay safe.

Resting Today, After the Storm.......

Traditional old fashion iris. I have lost track as to where I got this one. It is holding its own among all the other plants out there.

The storm was hard on this flower last night. We had a tornado threat about four miles away from us but it went in a different direction.  A couple of large trees were up rooted there but we had nothing but lots of rain and wind.

The edging is not completed here but the photo shows the almost completed patio. I worked with the eight pavers yesterday getting them all in place. I may fill the center area with small rock.The nineteen squares are almost all down.  I broke one that I can still use as a stepping stone.

Weather.....

I have been scheduled full for many days so as I haven't been able to mow at the old place. This afternoon I took off for Woodward and I could  seerain downpours scattered all along the way.  This one here eventually made it to where I was mowing.  I mowed in heavy sprinkles for the last twenty minutes and then I just quit as I was getting too wet..

This evening, we were in a direct zone of a tornado that specifically was about our area.  It did move on. We did take to the basement. The storm siren gave us an old clear about thirty minutes later. Radar is so great as they do see everything clearly. The weather doplar in our area is across the lake on the opposite side of our area.

 I made a box for a rose last year and in each corner I placed hosta.  They do like that store bought dirt.

This hosta was hard hit by the frost but it has had all the dead parts of leaves removed now and looks better every day.

I worked on the pavers again today, this morning.  I finalized the placement of eight more squares.  The design is not perfect for me but it  may have to be what it is. The two supporting posts that I laid the squares around are also not evenly places east and west. They were put in at the last and I assume the guys who drilled the metal part of the posts didn't get their machine in line.  The posts still support the deck above but he apparently had to adjust the placement to match the metal posts. Well enough on that stuff. I am tired from my tow  projects today.  The mowing was really needed to be done.  My mower handled it great so I cut right through it all.

It has been a strange day for Memorial Day.  I noticed that the cemeteries that I pass to go to the other place, were really not decorated much this year. We did have a neighbor across the street that had a big get together. I stayed on my side of the street. Thanks for stopping by this evening.

Weather..

The weather keep changing and our clouds now look like this.  We have been told that thunderstorms will hang around for half the day.

I apparently moved the white iris down to our home a couple of different time a ther is another one now in bloom. Photo taken from the balcony above.

The white iris against the fence is doing well.  It is a good indication that I could put more iris over there and they would do well.  I have a couple of iris that are not going to bloom because the red twig dogwood grew up and out and is shading them.  They didn't putI on buds like they did last year.  I can't move any plants into that area until I know for sure the voles have all been illuminated.  I put more vole poison out a few days ago as a couple of burrow holes opened up after the rain.

Without any fanfare, I stopped om the middle of paver work and I planted my puny tomatoes.  I used my tulip planter device and made holes quickly.  I drop the tomatoes into the holes, put them in as deep as I could and filled in the soil. I know they will grow faster in the ground as the soil was warm and moist while I was planting. They are small, I planted them too closely, and I was just glad to get them all in the ground.  Our season of lock down sort of messes with how I do things.  I went back to working with pavers after this job was done.  I will collect grass clippings and mulch it all later.

The iris is really just started blooming and I should have flowers blooming continually for a long time. I have a lot that I lost because of the voles. I am watching for the one lone liatrius that I moved to another part of the garden to see if it is there.  I haven't seen hollyhocks yet but I haven't looked specifically.

I am taking this day off as usual for Sunday but I do physically need to have a day of healing.  I work muscles that I don't normally use and they need time to heal.  I wish you all a good day and thanks for stopping by today.