Everyone please share some of your favorites from spring to get us through the winter. I know you have been looking in the online catalogs, but some of our pictures are better, or at least as pretty.




Reckless Abandon - Ride the Tiger
Spice Trader - Thunder Spirit
Strange Brew - Cool Operator

Good idea, Evelyn. What the names of the cultivars you pictured?

The last image is Cool Operator. Because I see it's name is in the image.

Andrea and Barbara ~ Thank you for reminding me. I added the names.

Just had a real scare! I went to my photo site to find pictures of irises to post and found that all my photos had disappeared. Ack! My computer ate all my pictures!

Fortunately, DD aka Tech Support was home for Christmas and retrieved them. I will post some of my favorites tomorrow.

Andrea ~ Whew!

that would have been a scare if all my pictures disappeared.... i don't have any tech support.

Nor do I!

It would have been terrible. I have my photos labelled by name, height, and bloom season. They are also sorted into albums according to color, bloom season, and planting locations which represents a lot of work which I really didn't want to do again! So grateful to DD!

Andrea ~ Do you have a paper copy of your records? Like printouts or a master notebook? Sometimes computers fail us.

Evelyn, this thread is perfect for me.

I actually just recently finished processing and selecting the remaining photos for the year and I was looking for a good place to put them after I upload to the database.
The 2019 bloom thread starts to feel a bit outdated at this time of year, so this will be much better.

Starting light with a couple of SDB's:


'Cat's Eye', the richness of the colors this year was very satisfying, probably because it was cooler during bloom than the last two years. This actually was the first time I saw this iris looking really good in my own garden. I know it looks good in other peoples gardens, but it has never been so good here before. This is a long exposure, 1.3 seconds at ISO 200, very late evening, so this helps to emphasize the richness of the colors too.



'Ostinatamente', a Loic Tasquier iris. The beard on this deep purple SDB often looks darker purple, but it can also look blue, as it does here in early and warm evening light.

That's a lovely photo of Cat's Eye, William!

Here's Gilt by Association from this past May.

Thundering Ovation
Need You Now
Cranberry Cloisonne
Don't Stop Believing
Born This Way
Absolute Treasure
Strawberry Shake

For some reason these photos do not look as bright as they do on my picture folder but here they are. I have tons.

William ~ That is an excellent picture of Cat's Eye.

Jan ~ I do not recall seeing Gilt by Association. It is lovely.

Jane ~ Those are all very pretty!

evelyninthegarden said:Andrea ~ Do you have a paper copy of your records? Like printouts or a master notebook? Sometimes computers fail us.

I have maps of what I have planted where and I also keep the packing lists from my iris orders. Those are my only hard copy records. Otherwise, I rely on computer records. I could reconstruct my records from those hard copies - I just don't want to.

Andrea ~ I understand. It is very time-consuming.

Jan, 'Gilt by Association' is such a beautiful small flowered TB. I just loved mine this past spring.

Jane, 'Absolute Treasure' is a mega favorite here.

Miami Beach
Toasted Watermelon

Crowned in Glory with I Feel Lucky

Rite of Spring with Hollywood Nights

Your Toasted Watermelon is just beautiful.

iciris said:Your Toasted Watermelon is just beautiful.

but actually all of them are beautiful!
I have never seen Toasted Watermelon before! (I don't think I would eat it though! )