"...looks like dried blood...."
Sadly, yes, the "reds" look like that to me (when they don't look like a burgundy/purple).
I think the "dried blood" ones will either go bye-bye, or else maybe get shoehorned in someplace out front.
As for anything else in the garden, it is too early to say for certain. Some older irises have not bloomed in some years - I am waiting for bloom to decide whether they will stay or go. Many of the "new" acquisitions from last year have not yet bloomed, so I have to wait on those. I do seem to have a lot of blue-and-white irises among last year's acquisitions, so I may triage those and keep the ones I like the most. I seem to have also collected a lot of near-white irises
, so there may be a similar triage that will have to take place there. But that probably won't happen this year.
I'm frankly dithering over 'Luminosity' right now. It's shorter than I like (it's certainly not getting up to 36"
), it's impossible to get a good photo of it, and I'm just not sure that I like it all that much. (I'd say that's true of almost any strong yellow iris (I got rid of 'Sun Master' a couple of years ago), but right now 'That's All Folks' is blooming and I have to say that it has my attention
) About the only points in 'Luminosity''s favor are that it reblooms, and it is playing its part in a bed whose color scheme has gone to yellows, whites, purples, and lavenders. I'm not sure that makes it worth keeping though... (I could always move 'That's All Folks' there, in its place, although I would then lose the rebloom.) Certainly I am downsizing it from 3 mini-clumps to 1 (the culled pieces will go to the club sale).
I'm possibly going to get rid of 'Breakers'. It doesn't like it where I put it (where, to be honest, it gets too much shade), and the last time that I had it in bloom, all of the blooms needed to be staked.
Apart from that, I'm coming around to the conclusion that I don't much care for SDBs, IBs, BBs... anything bearded that is not a TB, and even then, the TBs need to be taller. I'll probably keep those non-TB guys (and the smaller TBs) that have something really special going for them (like variegated foliage, for example), but otherwise they just aren't going to work in my garden (they'll get swallowed up) and I can only manage so many pots. (The irises don't seem to like to being in a pot long term anyway, and you certainly can't get a blooming clump in a pot, which is another reason to limit the pots and get the irises into the ground.)
I will evaluate my crop of blooms and decide what gets the shaft. My Chocolate Ecstasy has rotted down from two beginning rhizomes to one weak one. Might as well dump it too.
