Leslie, You are ahead of me. My Enchanted Princess hasn't even put up buds yet.
I've got a three foot budstalk on Mesmerizer, though!

Gretchenlasater said: Just went out and took a photo in a little better light. Now the "green" is more visable.

Gretchen, how beautiful! Love those soft colors!!

Lestv said: Elsa - I thought your seedling was rather Muggle-ly too!

More of my old tried and true SDB's are blooming.

Enchanted Princess


Irish Harp (which like the Princess always makes me think of Bonnie):


and Yummy Accent:

I miss Bonnie too! How amazing that we can miss someone we never met so much! (Or at least I never did) I enjoyed her posts so much and will never look at an SDB or a crow for that matter, without thinking of her stories.

DaisyDo said: Evelyn, I am in 7a, very close to 6b, and for years your irises have always started after mine. I suspect that although you are surronded by 8a, due to altitude you are actually in a zonal "island" that is colder than that, more like, say 6b. Have you tried zooming in on the more recent and more detailed zone maps that show zonal islands, to see if that could be the case?

I always thought that the USDA zones were determined by average minimum temperature in winter. We rarely go below 10°.

Leslie - I'm much in the same boat. Intense warmth then a quick cold snap. I keep tabs on how my plants perform by keeping stats of when they bloom.

I am so close to seeing some TBs show stalks that I might best my previous record set last year with an April 6th bloom.

I am WAY ahead of that range as some of the TBs are showing more potential to bloom even above the littles.

Your littles are fantastic. (For me, everything is offset by about 3ish~ weeks early here)

Evelyn, we rarely go below 15° here. Our average low (for or town) in January is 28°. And that's with us being on the margin between 7a and 6b.

What county are you in?

There are areas in the Sierra foothils that are 6b and even 6a. Here's a zone map that you can zoom in on to see greater detail than in the older maps: https://morningchores.com/plan... .

Gretchen: Aaah is stunning!!! I love the soft colors too!!!

Leslie: Love Your Yummy Accent!! And of course Enchanted Princess. You have got quite a show going on already!!!

Ev, Monty and Leslie: I think Muggles has a way better shape and coloring than mine but I am going to give mine another year to see how it blooms. I have 8 of this bee pod cross in the ground and 6 seedlings so it will be fun to watch what comes out of it. I just think Cats Eye can't produce anything too ugly. My best guess is the pollen parent is Moss Spot but just a guess.

Laura: Oh yes I remember Bonnie's Crow Stories and also Mountain Lion's on the roof stories

Here is my contribution for the night titled "Why do we worry so much about losing these dang things"…There is a garden on the other side of the rocks in this picture. A huge clump of this historic NOID Iris was removed from that garden to make room for new Irises since I already have another huge clump of the historic. But this thing is not giving up territory easy. This Spring, I found it growing on the other side of the rocks, among the weeds, in what will become a new garden. It truly is a cockroach of the Iris world

So nice to see blooms somewhere. Yes, Bonnie spread a lot of joy with her posts and wise humor. I miss them. I have many of the littles because of her generosity as do many of you. It's going to be a while yet before I enjoy some color, we have another 2 to 5 inches of snow coming tomorrow night.

Snow, snow, and more snow here too!

"This Spring, I found it growing on the other side of the rocks, among the weeds, in what will become a new garden. It truly is a cockroach of the Iris world"

Oh Elsa!

Funny you should be talking about certain irises as cockroaches, Elsa. Can a person be angry with an iris?!? I carefully transplanted what I thought was "Banan-Appeal" to two different places about a year and a half ago. It didn't bloom the first year, but last month it showed up with the year's first bloomstalks and lots of them! I was so excited- until I thought, B-A doesn't have pbf, does it? (When the stalks were first appearing the leaves had pretty nice pbf.)




so, no, it's not B-A, it's my cockroach iris that was an iris I pilferred from an abandoned field before I had any proper iris. It has consistently wiped out any iris it lives next to. It grows wherever you chuck it and I wish I'd never ever picked it up! (I'm pretty sure it's Crimson King). So, fool that I am, I even took a picture of it and it actually looks pretty good. Nice tight standards. Anybody want some? I'm definitely digging it up! It was probably 2012 when I originally took that fatal clump.

don't we all have a few roachy irises?

And then there are some you have to threaten to bloom, lol

Gretchen, thank you for the acorn!

They changed our prediction to 1 to 2 inches tonight, and 4 to 7 inches tomorrow.

Sorry about the prolonged winter Tom.

We've had about 5 so far today with 8-12 predicted thru tomorrow.
The fun part is, everything will explode as soon as it can and before I can get a chance to do the much needed spring clean up, and spring will get compressed with everything blooming at once. It's all good though. At least we will have water this summer

No. More. Winter!!!

Perhaps the "pesky" roach iris that nobody seems to get rid of is an iris pallida. They are everywhere for a reason.

One of my NOIDs that I have never figured out what (Quaker Lady, Sandalwood?) was planted in four individual sections that were about 4x6. When we moved to our old house, it was in June right after they'd bloomed.

Over the next 14 years, the "tan" NOID completely overran each bed. There were no more pink NOIDs, no orange NOIDs (bloomed once and then never again) and also no white NOIDs that remind me of Gay Paree.

And even though the last four years have seen those beds completely destroyed by goats (this is where the goat run was placed. I was forced to sacrifice my favourite bed :glare:), that tan NOID still refuses to die and will send up from a single start, 2-7 increases in about 7 months.

Thankfully, I love this iris and want to preserve them at the new house as they are a small touch of memory and history of the old house I grew up in.

Fun fact: Two irises overran those four 4x6 beds and it is what I am testing out this year with an actual ID of the iris I think it is, Helen Collingwood.

Of those 4x6 beds which overgrew each one into more like, one giant bed that is 6' (length vertical) and 35'+ (length horizontal)...only the tan NOID and the bicolor HC lookalike fought tooth and nail for each iris real estate. In some cases, they grew INTO each other or on top of each other.

The pictures I have of the overrun beds with irises and THEN weeds is somewhere. A nice testament to how resilient irises are.

I was surprised to see my first bloom today. It's raining, but got the picture before it turned to mush. It's two weeks earlier than last year.

Boo (SDB, L Markham, 1971)