Meeeeee, too!!

Meeeee three!!!!

Oooh Melbourne! You live in a lovely area. One of the first places I ever visited in Oz. Lucky you!

Look forward to seeing your blooms!

Thanks all. I'm looking forward to blooms too!
Glad you've been here, Leslie

Muddymitts said:I got my *final* order for the year this morning -- took the opportunity to order from Dee's Snowpeak Iris before it closes its doors.

I ordered For Lovers Only, Terracotta Bay, Thundering Ovation and Viking Dancer. Big beautiful healthy rhizomes -- and she included a bonus Iris as well.

Dee -- you're going to be missed in the industry. Thank you so much for taking such good care of your customers over the years.

Oh, I didn't know that Dee was leaving! Will her iris go to someone else?

She was working with someone on potentially buying the business. Haven't heard a resolution of that one, had planned to ask when she gets back from Alaska.

Final is when the vendors quite shipping. Seriously. Final before then has not been final if you take my meaning.

I don't think there is a final for a true iris lover. I plan to enjoy, touch, smell, plant, buy, grow, share irises as long as I live on this earth and then who knows, perhaps beyond that. Those feelings of needing to take up irises to go with you in the dead of winter when you cannot remember where anything else is, the instinct to protect an iris because it has been with you through thick and thin and was perhaps your mother's, the need to make your home feel like it is really your home by making an iris bed.... those things are not passing fancies but are innately part of who you are.

So....... denial will not help. If you stretch your budget to add one more iris, if you buy a gift of various rhizomes knowing that in a few years some will come back home, if you order the same iris from more than one vendor or two years running or buy irises when you do not have the foggiest idea where you will find space to plant them...... there is no final. Accept it, embrace it, wear it proudly! Stand up and exclaim to the world 'I am an irisaholic..... and I am proud of it'. Then start showing them your iris pictures.

Well spoken Bonnie!

I think you're probably right, Bonnie.

Bonnie, I think you were a poet in another life!

I think she's a poet in this life! I don't mean to emply a "final" in the literal sence, but final for this season, which ususally is when it's too late for them to survive the winter here, or you don't have a jack hammer to dig a hole to plant them in the frozen ground. If I plant them in September here, they will ususally make the winter, if I put a brick on them to keep them from heaving out of the ground, but they never bloom until the next season anyway, so I might as well wait and plant them when I should, and I'll still see the bloom at the same time, and don't have to stress them so much.

Ah, an unselfish iris grower. Makes sense but if someone said 'Tom, here is a lovely one called XYZ (use your favorite iris there)' and it is in September..... I can see ANOTHER brick in your garden. LOL We have our CAIS meeting on the third Sunday of each month and I have been given a little guy, more than once, on the third Sunday of November and took it home, potted it, sat in in a sunny location and started bringing it in at night after the temps drop and out each day and if you get more than a few this can become quite a chore (I sometimes seriously question my own sanity). Some irises like it and some just get confused I am sure. I do try and explain it to them however.......

A little gentle guidance is all that is needed in those who become confused, Bonnie.

At what point do you consider it too cold to leave the pots outside?

My boss jokingly calls me the "iris whisperer" but having just read your post Bonnie, I would say you are the true Iris Whisperer!

It depends on the temps for that season, Debra. Some winters are so mild that I have impatiens blooming outdoors over the Christmas Holidays and some winters they are killed by frost in October. If the irises 'harden off' during the day with temps above freezing and come in at night to avoid the frost, and make roots and grow, they can go outdoors when you feel they are ready..... an iris mother always knows. Before putting them outside to stay they will need to go outside of the warmth of the house for a week or two, as in a garage, so they will not be actively growing. I also bring pots of re-bloomers inside during late fall if it is going to freeze overnight and then back out in the sunshine in the morning. I need a greenhouse but where would I put one?!?!?

Thank you Leslie I will tell the dog that when he looks at me sideways and then at the iris to see what it will do. He thinks I am nuts too but he loves me anyway. LOL

I am a sink-or-swim kind of Iris caretaker and leave them outside all winter. Although,
I do corral and cover them all if an ice storm is expected.

But you have such a green thumb Debra, you could probably just put them in a sack in the back of the closet overwinter and they would bloom. LOL

Must be channeling my grandmother and great-grandmother. Both thumbs were brown-black when I got this house and it's been trial and error and lesson after lesson on what NOT to do. Think they might be giving me a little help the last few years.