So many new things in the shop!

It's Wednesday.  Groceries, working in the yard, and Cheeseburger Pie for supper. 

But at least I don't have to mess with making listings today!  I don't know why that chore pokes at me so bad, but it does.  It's a helluva lot more fun to MAKE the art than it is to list it.  Some of the listings I made a while back, but never did anything else with them. These are in the store now. 

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It's almost spring--even here in the desert--so the irises will be blooming in a month or so.  Time to feed them and feed and prune the roses.  This is the first year I've put a "Red, White, and Blue" bed out front along the street.  Interesting to see if enough are blooming at the same time to get the effect I'm after.  :~)  I try to live in the season I'm in, but dang, I am sooooo ready for Spring.  And we don't even have hard winters here!

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I mentioned a post ago about a crazy quilting class I went to, the one where I was bitten by yet another art bug?  The block in the top photo  below is one I made before the class--my first block--so I'd know what questions to ask.  You know how you just never know what to ask if you've never tried to do something?  So I wanted to know where the hard parts were to ask about.  Well, the ladies there liked it so much they wanted me to post it on a Crazy Quilt site on Facebook.  I did so, and the editor of Crazy Quilt Quarterly Magazine asked if she could put it in the summer issue!  Cool beans!  So it'll be there, along with a couple of my folk art pieces. Baby steps, baby.

The bottom photo is of two blocks I made in the class itself, and I have patches for two more just like them, which will all go on a big black tote-bag to carry a cutting mat and supplies to classes & stitching meets. 

Now I'm designing small crazy quilt projects, along with getting more things listed on Ebay and Etsy.  If you know anyone who needs doll wigs or eyeballs, there are some big lots on Ebay right about now.  I have to make some room!  :~P

Hope your Hump Day is spectacular, and your weekend even more so. 
Jan

More irises!

Been a little crazy, weather-wise here.  One day we're up in the 80's, the next it's 42 for the high.  Some of the irises sent up bloom stalks too early, and lost them in a later freeze.  Sad but true.  But we're Texans, here...and big swings are the norm.

I think we really are done with the freezes--I check the mesquite trees to be sure, but they have yet to confirm my belief.  Mesquites are the final arbiters of the Official End of Winter here...they absolutely do not leaf bud or bloom until it's safe to come out.  They just don't.

At any rate, I have had a wonderful time with the irises that have come out since that last freeze, and I've worked hard to identify them as they bloom.  Here is a PicMonkey photo of the irises I have identified ('cept for that peachy one), not that they've all bloomed yet, but these I know we have.  Plus a few that have blooms now...have I mentioned I love irises?  :~)

Names from L to R, top to bottom:  Immortality, Grandma's Blue Flag, ???, Dauntless, Before the Storm, Celebration Song, Magical Encounter, Carriage Trade, Drama Queen.

This one hasn't bloomed yet, but it's begun to put on a lot of new leaf growth, so it might bloom this year!  Secret Service.

Just identified this one yesterday...had to bring the bloom in to photograph because the wind was crazy!  After some searching, I found out that this one is Sable.

These are irises I grew at our place up in North Texas, when we lived out by the lake.  I had no idea what I was growing, nor did I care.  I put them all around, they bloomed, and I was happy.

Same place...and now that I'm so taken up with I.D.ing them, I hope I brought some of each of these fascinating types...I know I did bring lots of them with me.  I've dragged these poor things around for TEN YEARS, but we never lived in one place long enough or in a place with good planting conditions in all that time.  All that is changed, now that we're here.  Woohoo!

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.