Red Handed is nice. Love the blend of reds in it.

Beautiful Irises, Ken -- love the pink!!

Looking Good!!...Arlyn

Nice ones, especially the pink one.

Thanks for all the compliments. Seen a lot of great new ones from a lot of you that are awesome also. Have a few that aren't blooming this year including... Definately Different, Cosmic Celebration, Isn't this Something, Slovak Prince and a couple others that slip my mind right now. They have all recovered and hopefully will bloom next year... along with five new ones that I will be getting here shortly... plus a couple rescues.

Thank you for sharing your beauties with us Ken!

Ohhh, lots of beauties but really love that Red Handed!

Here are a few pics of the Blue Angel's flying over West Bay in Traverse City, MI. over this weekend for the National Cherry Festival. Always an awesome show. They have been flying here every couple years since the 80's and we never get tired of seeing them.

Our granddaughter





West Bay

GO NAVY !!.............Arlyn

If there isn't one already, I guess we need a new iris named Blue Angel!

This is off-topic, but I wonder if anyone else gets eaten up by mosquitos while working in the garden?
They love me, and it's a dilemma. I avoid all poisons, so I don't use the sprays with Deet - and some of the
herbal sprays don't last, and don't smell good on my skin - very distracting. But, while reading up on natural insecticides, I found
an article that said cinnamon was the best natural repellent. So, I've been dusting myself with small amounts of powdered cinnamon before going out to weed and putter in the garden. It seems to work, and I smell like a cookie!

How funny Jan! Just so the cookie monster isn't near by! I've heard that eating garlic is also a way to repel them. Then you'd smell like a Pizza! As wet as it's been one would think it would be a problem here, but I've only seen a few and that's been just in the last few days.

Those blood suckers were bad a couple weeks ago but they seemed to have settled down now, with a few cold nights.

Great photos Ken! you must be quick on the trigger to get photos of those guys flying overhead. They come to central AR about every other year. I used to take the kids to be properly awed by them. My oldest son was evidently inspired as he got his education at the Air force Academy in CO. Now that kids are all grown I do not go to the air shows anymore. I am glad I went to see them when I did.... and drug the kids along to see them too. LOL ... great times.

Jan, the mosquitoes here are the worst! I have heard all kinds of things to do to avoid them but the only thing I have found is the avon product 'skin so soft' and putting ammonia in a spray bottle and misting the porches and ground around where I am working. They leave for a bit but return with a vengeance.

Bonnie, Tom, it's been dry here, but we have a pond, and the pond fish don't manage to eat all the mosquito larvae.
We do have a nice colony of bats that do their best to snarf up the skeeters at twilight, but some manage
to hang on and live to bite me! (the mosquitos, not the bats!)

As for garlic, I love to cook with it, but draw the line at wearing it. I think I'm sticking with the cinnamon for now!

The Blue Angels really make me think of home in Michigan. Saw so many of their airshows growing up! Thanks for the pics!

As for mosquitoes - they are a plague every summer here. As soon as late afternoon gets here they come out. I confess I use the sprays. If not I am eaten within minutes. And I really get itchy. I think I may try the cinnamon, but hope I don't then become attactive to the wasps!!!

Great photos Ken! My mind was putting the fly by sound to each one.

"Skin So Soft" does work, but when I mix the smell of that product with the smell of my swet....well, I would run for cover too. I eat a lot of garlic and that doesn't work for me...and there's no way I smell like a pizza after yard work. Smelling like a cookie sounds nice, may be I'll give that try. My Mother swears that using dryer sheets (example: Bounce) will keep the mosquito's away. She hangs a few of the sheets from out of her pockets. For some reason, I have yet to try the bounce method.

Dryer sheets?? I knew you could use them to soak encrusted baking dishes, but never as a bug repellant. Hmmmm.
When I was up in Canada last year I had some blue Dawn dish soap in a cup and all the mosquitoes that got into the cabin drowned themselves in it. Too bad there is no portable version of that!

Dryer sheets are super toxic. The chemical fragrances are linked to prostate cancer, endocrine disruption, asthma, migraines and more. Remember, anything with the word "fragrance" is protected by Trade Secret laws. That means the ingredients do not have to be listed. It is where companies hide their chemicals.

I use patchouli oil, but that stinks to a lot of people. www.honest.com has bug repellant that a lot of people find pleasant.

I just did some quick follow up reading on how toxic dryer sheets are and yikes! Thank you very much for that info Linnea, I never heard about it before.

The best way to manage mosquitoes is to have a Martin birdhouse. We rarely even see a mosquito, much less get bitten. Even this year with all the rain -- and I know mosquitoes are abundant because of it -- the Martins keep the population way down.

We also have Barn Swallows in the barn - and they are great mosquito-eaters too! And the follow-up act is the Bats, which come out in the evening.

The Martins start their migration to their winter home the end of this month. Once they're gone, the mosquitoes become evident -- but usually we're in the dry part of summer by then and they don't get the breeding grounds that they do early in the season.

Skin-So-Soft works for me for so many bugs -- especially chiggers!!