Because it it there.....

This row of iris all staked up so they can bloom on a vertical stem, create an unusual composition.  I will share it because I have it.  I am showing you way too many iris but endure it all as the iris are fading.  There will be no more iris posts in the near future.

The spiderwort is in partial bloom.  I didn't get it staked this year and it fortunately is standing on it's without any support.  I had a magenta colored on that has been destroyed by invading hosta plants.

 Pontentilla come in many colors but my white one seems to be a strong bloomer this year.  It doesn't like warm weather so it struggles in Iowa in August.

 It is a bug portrait again coming from my back yard.  This is the rose that I moved from southern Iowa to my south side of my house.   It is it's third year in the ground and I am pleased with the way it has rooted in and revived to a wonderful rose.  I bought it for my mom years ago and I haven't a clue as to the name of it.  I must have paid a lot of money for it as it is such a strong plant with shiny green leaves.  It has five blooms on it right now and will rebloom after I trim it back.

It is going to be warm today and that will be great.  I have many things on my list to do when I leave the school today.  I have found that I can't do it all so I will make a strong effort to get a lot of things done on one of the projects.

I am a floating special ed. teacher today, taking notes about World War 1 and writing poetry for a final project.  I don't know the next class that I will be attending as I will be sent in to replace the most critical spot. There are actually two people gone and there is only one of me.

Thanks for stopping by my post today.

Macro Memories............

As the season of iris comes to an end in a few days, I am glad that I have these shots.  Every stalk of iris had to be staked but the blooms were abundant this year.

Have a great day.  Thanks for stopping by my post.

Thursday's Checking In........

The red daisies lay on the ground among the violets and creeping Charlie.  You have a top, side and back view with the three flowers.

Another shot of my old fashion iris.  I am glad it is doing so well as it has been planted there for quite a few years.

Group shot of the 'Superstition" iris shows how robust this iris is.  It has large fans of leaves and many stalks of flowers.

It is a first period of sitting with a middle school band.  It is touch and go as to who will be sent to the office.  I may send myself to the office and have the principal experience her children live.


Thanks for stopping by today.  Friday is coming very soon. It is only a day away.

Tuesday's Things.........

The dark buds really don't help one to know what color the iris will be. This probably ia more of a red-brown iris as the camera doesn't pick up red colors accurately.  This iris sat about three feet back from it's present location.  I moved it away from a forsythia bush and out into the sun.  This is the second year that it has bloomed but only two stalks of buds came up this year instead of the three that came up last year.  I may move the back portion to another location in my garden.

 

 I keep taking pictures of this wiegela as the rains have made it really bloom.

This small rose has many buds on it and they flowers are really nice.  It has many blooms and if I keep them cut back they will bloom most of the summer.

I took a shot of the new sprouts from the leaf starts.  I am not going to rush into replanting these as I want lots of roots on them before I move them.

The old traditional iris is starting to bloom.  My neighbor was given this also and it bloomed earlier than mine.  Her iris did not survive the rains and the winds and they looked like a hurricane had hit them. I am glad my waited to bloom later.

It is a bazinga day at school for me.  Each day some group of students sneak in and treat a teacher's room to a special hazing.   The Spanish teacher is gone the first two hours.  When I, the sub, entered the room I had to remove a criminal yellow tape from the door.  When I walked in,  every student desk had been flipped upside down but all neatly still in the right location.  He also has his desk covered with balloons.  Since I have only two classes today before he returns the kids are going to sit on the floor and also leave the balloons in place so he can see it all when he returns.  The students like sitting on the floor anyway even though a couple are sitting on the desk while it is upside down.

Bazinga is a friendly honor to the staff.  I am not sure that it is students but I suspect if it isn't, that a staff person had to have student help to accomplish this.  In order to teach sit-in's of the sixties last week, one of the staff social studies teachers had one, in the neighbor's classroom, unannounced.  It probably wasted five minutes of class time but these kids don't know what sit-ins look like unless they watch Occupy people today.

We awakened this morning to the sound of our furnish running again.  It was 50 degrees F. last night and won't warm up to 65 degrees today. Thank you for stopping by my post today.

Rain and Wind.......

The rain and wind is a love/hate relationship to our world.  I like that we have rain and I don't like drought.  I don't like so much rain that it wrecks the spring flowers.  But the wind has been menacing.  Most of my larger blooming irs are laying on the ground from too much water and high wind breaking them down.

The cemetery iris above is going to have a few more blooms so I should get a better photo.  They whole lot of the iris look like they have been through hurricane Lawrence.

The fernleaf peonies are all done but one branch must have slept in or something.  The last two small buds came out on Saturday.

These buds have opened and the were on the ground yesterday from the wind.  I will show you tomorrow what the color is of this iris.  Think red everybody, or maybe red-brown.

I do not know the name of this rose. The plant has many blooms on them and the actual flower is half the size of a normal rose.  I like the rose as I trim off the spent roses and it sets up new buds immediately.

Saturday proved to be an interesting day in Woodward, Iowa.  They put in a new track around the football field and it had been put to good use.  They had a Junior High State Track Meet at the new track.  It was said that over 100 different schools were sending students to the meet.  We live four blocks from the area and we had cars lined up and down our street.  The town was doubled in size just for one day.

I am an art teacher in the morning and a special education teacher in the afternoon. We are running out of Mondays before school will be out.  It has seemed like a short school, but not as short as my last weekend.

Hey, we watched the new PBS version of Sherlock Holmes done in our present time period.  It is done well.  We watched three episodes in a row and became a lot loony.  What I found interesting was the fact that Dr. Watson, wrote about all that they did on his BLOG.  So the whole world was keeping track of them in the modern world as they were solving cases.  Once in a while in the dialog Holmes would ask another person how he knew his information and the person would reply, "I read it on the blog."

Thanks for stopping by today.

Sunday's Blooms.......

The pink wiegela keeps putting out great blooms.  The bush has grown so large that it is banging its branches against a window every time the wind blows.

This is the iris that my parents had planted on the south side of their garage.  I moved it up here and it seems to be a very hearty iris.  I don't know it's history as they moved from one property to their last property and they could have moved it with them. 

This is my favorite iris in the bunch out there. I like it's light purple almost blue color.  It is doing so well right now but we just had a downpour rain. I am sure it took some damage.  I have a few cemetery iris yet to bloom and the one very dark one that blooms wonderful flowers. I also have a red brown iris that is going to bloom in the next couple of days.

Monday is coming.  I will be back at school tomorrow. I spent two hours mowing on Saturday and did not get done. I spent half the time, changing oil, cleaning up the air filter, cleaning the spark plug and finally messed with a failing cable that allows the mower to run. The mower kept dying and I would fix the next thing thinking I could keep it running. I want to throw that old mower away but won't probably until the end of the season.  There is a functioning mower behind all that stalling of the machine.  I will just keep messing with it to keep it working.

Thanks for stopping by my post today.

Wednesday's wanderings......

The wild roses in my backyard are starting to bloom.  They show their flowers rapidly and it seems like they are gone too quickly.  The buds are everywhere but the blooms have some splotchy color because of the cold snap a month ago in April.

When the warm  front came through in March it caused a lot of changes in the plant growth.  The hostas are large.  It usually takes most of spring for them to mature.  I know that parts of Alaska where the daylight stays for most of the day that plants do grow bigger.  I think our early summer weather cause these guys to move up two months.   I keep thinking the hosta to the right might be a family member to the one called "Sum and Substance."  It has very large leaves and looks like I will need to split it up for new growth.

I kept a redwood flower box planted with chives.  I have had it for years as it just came up every year. We liked using it on our baked potatoes.  For some reason the whole thing died out the last winter.  I planted some new starts from another part of my garden and it is timidly taking off and growing.  It will be a few years before that box fills up again.  I will put fresh soil in it again this year to revive it's growing matter.

The field lilies are actually taking off early this year also.  I have Asiatic lilies in there and they usually are bigger, taller than the field lilies when they bloom.  This is a view off my west side of the patio for those newbies who don't know my backyard.

This iris is blooming right now.  The ones that came from my parents property are blooming at the neighbors but mine will be a few more days to open.  She has them planted on the north side of the house and one would think they would bloom earlier than ones that are out in the sun.

I am tech guy today but tomorrow I have been promised a busier day.  The high school is taking off in the afternoon leaving all the different middle school classes that high school teach, open.  I will probably jump from social studies to English to math to pe all afternoon.

I took an old man spill yesterday while pitching in middle school pe.  I had bad shoes that wouldn't allow me to stop being propelled towards a ball that I was trying to catch.  I fell on my shoulder, doing a tuck and roll, then rolled right over summersault, was back on my feet and the one little girl tossed me the ball to start pitching again.  I didn't have time to think about what had happened but am a little achy today. I guess the little girl thought I was 13 and I roll around while playing the game all the time.

Thanks for stopping by my post  today.

Wednesday's Wandering........

The columbine took a hit early on with the freeze but it didn't take out the buds, just those flowers that were in bloom.  So I am getting a good show from my two plants.

We were very warm yesterday and these peonies actually opened up so you could see their centers. My earliest plant like this is now spent as the warm weather made the petals wilt and shrink.

Red is hard for the digital camera to translate but this is close to the actual color.  They are going to be gone soon with the warmer weather.

My neighbor guy who is not a gardener keeps telling me I need to prune back my spirea.  He doesn't like the look of my ancient shrubs.  I do see he trimmed his three off to a foot high and you can imagine what they look like this spring.  I can thin them out if they were full of dead wood but they are not, he just doesn't like the branches dangling down when not in bloom. I finally told him that they are on my property and that I will nurture them the way I think best.

I have a larger set of spirea along the alley and they are doing great just like the ones on the property line.  As you can see I have very nice looking shrubs.

One last photo just for show.  The iris actually are not leaning, the old man shooting the shot seemed to be leaning with the camera for some reason.

I am a tech guy today and it seems to be a busy morning.  I am working with ipads again today, download applications onto them for the staff to take to a workshop.  I don't like the keyboard of an ipad and I really don't think I will ever purchase one.  I type quickly and the ipad requires one to type with two fingers switching from an alphabet screen to a numbers screen back and forth while typing.

Thanks for stopping by my post today.  

The Frst Iris to Bloom........

This old fashioned iris is from the property in Osceola.  It really isn't a family iris other than my parents had it planted against the garage for thirty years.  Who knows where they found the starts but probably from some neighbor.

As you can see in the background is a dandelion in bloom and also there is a view of a peony bush that was transplanted there last fall.

The weathered tulip will be dropping it's petals very soon.  The 60 mph wind has dislodged a lot of the petals of the tulips.

Aronia berry bush is going to put out some fruit.  I will give the berries when ripe to the neighbor lady to add to her other bushes' fruit that she has growing.

The lilac season is almost finished.  I did get my yard partially mowed last evening.  I had to set the mower deck on the highest setting. I was cold with my parka hood pulled up to keep warm. The grass is very uneven so there were places where I was not mowing anything.

 I have two lots so it takes me a couple of days to push a mower around the property.  I did have a lot of sticks to pick up as I did different sections.  My old mower started one more time after I cleaned the spark plug and put gas in the carburetor.  It started right away with out too much complaining.  I have to admit that I only had gasoline that was intended for the chainsaw.  It has some oil additive in it and the old mower seemed to like the extra oil.  I will purchase gas before I finish mowing the orchard area.

I am following a nice young man around with him to his classes today.  We have a full schedule today and by the end of the day I will be well versed in Health, English, American History, Science and Math.  He is doing a visual presentation today as to how to make chocolate chip cookies.  His mother taped it on her phone (sideways) last night and the video is being shown.  There will be cookies to eat after the video.

Thanks for stopping by my post.