Tuesday's Post.....

 

I was surprised to see goldfinch at the feeder. The sock has been out there about a month.  The pair stayed and ate seed for a long time.  I hope they return but they may have been just flying thorough.  The female has brown colors and black and white stripes on its wings.

The columbine is starting to bloom.  I had the wild columbine in my garden but I have never had this kind before I moved here.  It is surprising how the seeds spread all over the garden.  The seeds must be spread by the birds. 

I have an older traditional bloom here that I probably got at my parents place.  It is actually a larger version of the one cemetery iris. 

This cemetery iris surprised me by being alive and well.  I  planted it in an unusual place last summer at the wrong time of the year and I thought it was dead.  I was so glad to see it sprouting and shooting up stems. The nice thing about the cemetery iris is that they are so tough.  They have survived Iowa winters and hard conditions out in the rural areas of Iowa.  The grow up in tall grasses and weeds in cemeteries where they have not been taken care of so much.  I saw more of them when I was a kid on Memorial Day but today's caretakers are scraping the land and are trying to get perfect flat surfaces among the grave stones.  It looks good but erases the plant history of our old cemeteries. The same kind of iris still grows along roadsides even when the farmstead has been cleared.

I trimmed the back yard today and mowed a section of it.  I was bagging the grass as we have just had too much rain.  It makes it to be slow work so I just didn't get done.  I will rest and do the rest tomorrow.  We are going to be warming up now for a few days.   

Thanks for checking in today.