The Unblooming Iris (Part 2)

We had to skip town for some urgent family stuff.  Urgent family stuff takes a bit of the wind out of your sails.  Goes without saying, I guess. 

We got home, exhausted and smelly, and I was immediately and illogically cheered by what greeted me. 

surprisingly un-purple, in a pinkish way

As I mentioned, I've had this plant for four years.  

Not bad, as payoffs go.

I love the colors and textures.  The fuzzy + the veiny + the ruffles. 

It was such a pleasure to just sit outside with my coffee and admire what nature and science has so lovingly crafted.  

But that's not all.  

Orange photobomb

This is another first for this O-Town Gardener.

It is one year old,

And my poppy has popped.

*Boom*

  

 One of 3 poppies survived the planting.  It didn't flower last year, but it's clearly quite productive this year.

The pods are all cute and fuzzy like baby tomatoes.

pods pods pods

I bought the poppies as a multipack of seedlings, so the orange is a surprise.  But I don't mind the pop of orange.  My garden isn't all match-ey match-ey and the same color.  That's all right with me.  

Perennials might require more time and patience, but there are some great surprises along the way.  

Annuals are for chumps.

 

Maybe that's too harsh.  But just look at this show!

In the beginning perennials are teeny.  In the first year you wonder if they are sick or dying.  And you lose a few.  I've certainly lost a few.  But Perennials are awesome.  You plant one year and the next year they come back to you.   

Looking as fresh and gorgeous as ... well, THIS.

A much-needed pick-me-up. 

The Unblooming Iris

It must be, oh, four or five years ago since we went to that small-town library book sale.  There was an adjacent plant sale, but at the time D & I lived in an apartment with no direct sunlight.  I had had no intention of adopting plants, but as I loitered outside waiting for D to finish up with his purchases, both the library and plant sales were winding down and the ladies were getting antsy to rid themselves of what hadn't sold.  

Would I like to take home a plant?

No, no, just the books, thanks.

And if they offered me free plants would I just take them?  

No, I declined politely.

Did I know they were going to throw them out after I left?

Okeydokey then, I'll take two.  

In the four or five years since I have had the lily it has bloomed all but the last two years.  On the sunless porch in the teeny pot, it still popped up some lovely flowers for me.  I transplanted it two years ago and it didn't bloom, but upheaval can be tough on us all, so that's understandable.  

See, no direct sun.  Such a trooper!

to be honest, I'd forgotten what color it was until I saw this photo

Last year it was smothered into the dirt by the iris, and I'd rather thought it had died.

Now you see it 

Totally smothered

It didn't die though, hardy son of a gun. When it peeked above the soil line this spring I swooped in to rescue it, transplanting it into the front bed.  It's looking happy and healthy.  

he's on the right.  Next to the foofy-pants poppy

This iris has been another matter though.  

Every year this leafy bugger gets bigger, but has never so much as put on a single bloom.  

What color iris?  Why, I have no idea.  It's adopted.  

But then ...

I couldn't believe when I caught a glimpse of this peeking out of the foliage. 

I've read about irises that don't bloom.  Caused either by stress (if its been transplanted), or soil deficiencies.  Too much nitrogen, not enough phosphorous.  This isn't necessarily resolved with normal fertilizers, because that often just piles on more nitrogen, because it coaxes green growth over blooming.  We tried sprinkling some fireplace ash, which supposedly also leaches potassium into the soil.  

Maybe that made the difference?  I dunno.  

Purple!  I think it's purple!!  Eeeee!

Front Garden Grade Card

People tell you not to flip out when you plant perennials for the first time.  You need to have an eye for the long term picture.  They will eventually yield that full-out English garden grown-in-together-for-years look.  After a few years.  If one needs immediate validation as a gardener, annuals are a better choice.  They poof up, they die, and next year you start all over again. 

Well I can wait.  Delayed gratification is better.  And yet.
  

I have garden anxiety.  When the box arrived from Bluestone I peeked in excitedly (that's a lie, I tore that box open) and the stalks of my perennials seemed so small.  Are they going to be ok out there?  A strong gust of wind would blow them over, or so it seemed.  And now that they've been in the ground about a month now, I have to say that I'm a bit worried that I may not have any green on these thumbs at all.

In the beginning, the geraniums looked... bad.

Geranium Rozanne

Planted

Progress

They haven't gotten much bigger after a month.  Not much in new green growth, but there are finally flowers.  

I think maybe they need more water than I've been giving them.  I can say that now that I am a newly minted gardener, I am keenly aware of the weather.  I'm always checking for the next rain.  

If anyone has any geranium advice, I'm all ears!

Salvia "Eveline"

Out of 4 plants, this was the only healthy one of the bunch, I'm sorry to say.

Little buds peeping out, and the first signs of slug attacks

This was one of the first ones I pulled from the box.  This one actually flowered.

With the exception of this one pictured here, the salvia eveline looked terrible.  They were moldy and snail-ridden when I pulled them from the shipping box.

note the snail eggs

 Three of the salvia eveline came out like a train wreck.  Their leaves were either wilty and mushy or their were holes in the leaves.  They came out of the shipping box covered in slugs and slug eggs.  Strangely enough, none of the other plants had pests on them, not even the other species of salvia.

A few days after planting one of them died altogether, and the other two lost most of their leaves.  I sent a note and some photos to Bluestone, letting them know how disappointed I was in their slug-riddled flowers.   They were really stand-up about the whole thing.  I got an apology and replacement flowers within a week.  That's a good company, right there.  I approve.  They stood by the quality of their product, and I respect that.  Slugs can happen.

There were new holes in the salvia eveline leaves pretty much every time I checked them.  Finally I spoke to a colleague who told me that it was slugs.  Slugs again!  It seems that when you get rid of one garden nemesis (groundhogs) you find yourself another.  Sure enough there were slugs underneath the plant or on the underside of the leaves pretty much each time I checked it.  I tried slug poison pellets because Bobby is never unsupervised in the front yard.  Sure enough the snail presence diminished, and I don't often see the snot-like slug trails in the mulch anymore.   I did try the beer trap in the front flower bed as well, and again I never had a single slug in it.  The only effect it had was to make the front of our house smell like a college dorm.  

Salvia "Plumosa"

Unlike the salvia eveline, the plumosa hasn't been sluggy.  Right after planting they became infested with red spider mites and white flies.  I used a spray called Sevin for that, and it seems to have worked.  The plumosa leaves, which had yellowed from the stress of infestation regained their green color.  I respray whenever I catch a glimpse of white flies.  


You see how they flop over?  I'm not sure how to handle this.  The stems look pretty weak to me.  I wonder if this is simply because the flowers are too heavy, or if there's a structural weakness stemming from (no pun intended) something else...

I feel like I just can't catch a break with salvia.    

Nepeta Dropmore Hybrid (Catmint)

Blooms!  

It had blooms right away, but then stopped flowering.  It has filled out with more greenery though, which is good enough for now.  At least its not dying.  

Patience, patience.

Nepeta Walker's Low (Catmint)

I have two of these, and they look like completely different plants. 

Look:  

Plant one stands upright, growing tall. 

Plant two is growing along the ground.  

incidentally, this one isn't flowering at all...

Poppies

Not looking real good.  May be sturdy enough to survive, but I'm losing confidence.  There is less greenery than there was when they were first planted.  Seeking out poppy advice is problematic because inevitably a google search bring up illicit poppy production webpages, which is not helpful.  

Iris "Big Blue"

not blooming, not real healthy.

Daylily "Barbara Mitchell"

ditto.

There you have it.  the catmint and the geranium and the salvia are doing ok.  The poppies, irises, and lilies are regressing.  

50% is not a good gardening grade.  

Frown.

Belated Back Yard Update

Haven't posted for awhile.  Things have been busy for D and I both personally and professionally.  Oh, and we've also both been stricken with pretty gruesome cases of poison ivy.  

But full schedules and itchy rashes notwithstanding, we've made time for work around the yard.  With how crappy the yard used to look, I think we've made real progress.  

Remember this?  This was in the beginning.  The vine orgy.

note the overgrown mess of honeysuckle strangling the mulberry in the back

Fantastic tangle of dead crap left in mounds for us to clean up 

We cleaned up the dead vine remnants.  Then D removed the vintage, rusty laundry pole.

 This is what it looked like this spring  

We planted grass seed, and some weeds popped up.

 Transplanted hostas from the front.  

And they are being eaten by slugs.  Swiss cheese here.

I've tried beer traps, but using homebrew must be a mistake, because the beer traps are always empty.

It's not perfect, but its green and the lumber has been moved.  

The grass grew in very well at the base of the tree, and quickly too.  

I think the giant elephant-ear sized leaves look like rhubarb, but I haven't actually identified them.  If they are, they can stay.  If they are not rhubarb, they are outta here.

I planted another hosta and a second astilbe.  I need to mulch this area, but just haven't got around to it.  The lily has already bloomed.  It looks like it too made a successful transplant.  

And on the other side of the yard, the tree branches from the honeysuckle felled by my husband the were left to dry out along with whatever vine was strangling that tree here.  D chopped that down with an ax.

This side of the yard was pretty hideous for a few weeks.

:: wince ::

 The day finally came when the branches were dried enough to be (relatively) easily stripped down to be put into the yard waste bins for collection. 

 It was around this time that I got poison ivy

After hours outside stripping branches, I'd barely made a dent.

even with bobby's help

 D made a more orderly and controlled lumber pile.  Using 2 concrete sidewalk squares left intact from the concrete removal on the side of the house to raise the pile up off the ground to keep them dry, and four rebar poles.  We'll be covering the lumber pile with a tarp to keep the burn pile dry.  

And D spent a third afternoon breaking down more branches,
and this is what it looks like now.  Eh?

One more time.

Before:  

After: