Saturday's Stuff

 While at the cemetery on Thursday I got to see the abundant growth of this iris on my Uncle Leo's grave site. It was in full bloom and could be seen fro a long distance. This was his favorite iris that he grew in Oregon and his daughter dug it and moved it to her Chicago home. Eventually the iris was moved to St.Louis, Missouri at here home now. His daughter, my cousin Sharon, planted it on the grave when Leo passed probably ten years ago. She has encouraged me to take samples of rhizomes a couple of different times, so I did take some more. I planned to start a new garden area for iris and that will be the first thing I will plant there. 

 My row of peonies are blooming well. The red peony is so good at not reacting to the rains, Most of the other colors lay down on the grown when it rains. 

 

This is the last bloom of this variety of iris. It only had one stem of blooms this year. I may just move it to encourage better growth. 

 At the Murray, Iowa cemetery is a Freedom Rock. Ray Sorenson painted a big rock along a gravel road in Menlo, Iowa yearly. That was so popular that eventually he was commissioned to paint Freedom Rocks all over the state of Iowa. There is a different one in every one of our 99 counties. 

 The rocks he paints always includes a draped American flag on it. This side of the rock depicts military men who were killed during WW II. The man named George Horton was killed in Normandy. He is buried in France and I consider him to be a step-first cousin. I was a part of his family because my grandmother remarried into the family. John and Iva Horton, his parents were like grandparents to me as the lived close to us on the farm and we visited them often. My first cousin Joan was a cousin, on her dad's side of the family, to the Matthew Daniel painted on the rock. He was killed at the Pearl Harbor bombing. The artist ran for House of Representatives in Iowa and was elected. So between sessions he is out there painting rocks for people now in all of our surrounding states. His kids are old enough to help to do base coats of paint. 

 My tomatoes are doing well in spite of the cold. The birds are loving the open ground and are out there rolling in the dirt. We have dozens of newly hatched sparrows as well as new mourning doves. I just hung my hummingbird feeder this afternoon. One came up to check out the colorful spinner so I knew one was out there. I used up the last of our sugar sack making their sugar water. We don't use sugar for anything except for them. Diabetics don't sugar things and my wife never was keen on sugar anything anyway. 

Thanks for stopping by today.