Flower update

I am having such fun this spring.  Nearly every day, something new is going on in the yard.  Its fun to explore and see what is new.

The daffodills are the star of the yard right now.  They are doing extremely well.  I just love them - they're so cheerful!

The tulips are finally blooming, despite the yard-bunny's best efforts to eat them.  I got the Monet mixture - all pastel shades of pink and yellow.  So far, they're white, pink, and dark red.

Our lilacs are finally blooming.  I LOVE lilacs and it was such a nice suprise that the former owners of this house planted several.  When I lived in Houston, I really missed lilacs.  They don't grow there and that made me sad.

Our irises have been a bit of a mystery.  We got several from Will's grandmother's yard in Idaho.  I thought it would be a nice tribute to have some of her plants in our yard.  They were all done blooming when I dug them out, so I have NO IDEA what colors I grabbed.  Then a bit later in August, my mom found some random guy in the neighborhood who was dividing and giving away some of his very expensive, award-winning irises.  Mostly in blue.  We think.  And I just randomly scattered both sets of irises throughout the yard, so I really have no idea what is planted where.  I'm just going to assume blue = random guy, everything else = grandma.

My mom has been telling me all winter that the irises won't bloom the first year.  I did some googling, and the interwebs told me that if the rhyzomes are planted early enough in the late summer, chances are good for flowers.  We planted the Idaho ones in mid-August, so I thought we'd have a good chance for flowers.

And look what I found this morning:



You can see one of my alliums in the near left background, my pack
of garlic directly behind the iris, and some daffys in the far background

Isn't it beautiful?

View from the top, showing off the coloring:

So extremely pretty.  I just wish it was located in a place where I didn't have to peer through some corner window to see it.

We also have a white iris flowering.  While not as pretty, it sure smells good.

My garden experiment has been an experiment.  And that's about the best I can say about it.  About 3 weeks ago I posted this:

This is my indoor seed starter.  In the foreground is mostly lettuce, with some kohlrabi and some herbs.  In the background are tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant (ie the long to germinate plants).  The background plants were starting to get leggy, so I left the lid off the greenhouse.  And then Zipper ate all the plants.  Poo.  These guys needed to be in the ground mid-May and need a good 8-12 weeks before they're ready to go outside.  I now had only 4-6 weeks.  :( 

I transplanted the cool weather seedlings last weekend.  And then they all shriveled and died from the heat.  So, my big "start the seeds indoors" experiment has not been a successful one.  So far.  I am determined to somehow get it to work.

About 2 weeks ago, I did direct-sow some cool weather seeds.  I wanted to see how they'd do outside vs their pampered inside siblings.  So far, so good:

I think these are my mixed lettuce seeds.

Yes, the cups look weird.  But here's my logic:  From top to bottom, the bed consists of: several inches of mulch, weed block fabric, dirt.  You sow the seeds very shallowly in the soil. I didn't want the little seedlings to get lost in the maze of fabric and mulch, so I thought the cups were a clever way of helping them find their way.  And they seem to be happy.  I will probably be planting another round tomorrow, so we have lettuce growing in stages.

Also: 2 of our 6 hops are showing leaves.  The hops we took from Cow Camp in Idaho and some Chinook hops.  But of course, I neglected to snap a photo of them.  They've been secured in chicken wire so the bunnies won't eat them.  Hopefully they'll be happy and grow us lots of hops.