Spring! Irises!

This is for those of you still buried under the snows of winter...if you are tempted toward jealousy over our early spring and warm winter, come visit this July.  That's all I've got to say about that.  But if you need a reminder that spring IS coming, here you go.  Irises!  They're the first to bloom in our garden...some later than others, so the show goes on for a couple of months.

I love irises!

Phil does too--thank goodness--and we have two long beds of them down both sides of the front walk, and two more beds winging out to the sides, in front of the house. Lots of them have big fat flower buds forming, and several have already bloomed.

Most of the iris in these beds are what iris growers call NOIDs...which just means no I.D. irises.  My goal this year is to tag and identify as many as possible, through the various websites and gardening friends.  One great thing about iris (aside from gorgeous color, heavenly scent, and structural foliage?) is that they multiply rather handily.  As mine need dividing to thin out the beds, I'll sell the excess on Ebay to pay for other gardening expenditures. I am a thrifty gardener, after all.

Tall German Bearded Iris: Dauntles (not a NOID!!!)

In the meantime, I have devised a way to tag them with numbers, saving the "real" (read: expensive) garden tags for when I know their real names.

Here's how:

Take an 8" x 4" piece of aluminum foil, fold it in halves until it ends up a smallish square.  Poke a hole in the "most folded" corner, insert a twist tie or pieces of floral wire, and BOOM!  Instant garden tag.  Use a not-too-sharp pencil to write on it. The goal is to indent, not mark, because the indention won't wash off or fade in the sun.  My tags are temporary, but if you use two or three times the amount of foil, folded down, you can make some really durable markers that cost almost nothing.

Hope you are either enjoying your spring, or at least genuinely believing it will arrive!

Be well,

Jan the iris obsessed.