"Late spring" bloom, and the summer / fall re bloom, is always 'food for the masses', here ! The insect , of all kinds, are really starting to show up by the end of the first week of June......and, let's face it!.....everybody's got to eat ! It is distressing to see them all chewed up, and I've tried different 'repellants', to keep them away, with very limited success. All the "regular" iris ,of course, have been treated for borers with a systemic insecticide, and since most of them have finished blooming before the increased insect activity....I can live with the few blooms that get to be someone's lunch. But, the re bloomers don't get the 'second dose" of insecticide...in deference to the bees.....so they always suffer pretty badly.

The woes of a gardener......................

Yes, and we do it because we love it. "There is always next year..."

All the TB's are open now only a couple left to show.

I Pink I Can



Another pic of Rainbow High


Uncharted Waters

put my hand in pic to show the size of this massive bloom.

Of course, my noid which has been blooming for a while now.



Shadow Warrior


Found my first case of rot on SW here the other day, in a long, long time . It has been raining a lot the last couple weeks. I found some blooming stalks laying on the ground, rotted at the base.

Oh no Ken!

Came home from a weekend with the grand babies, and discovered
2 late bloomers: Gypsy Lord and I' m Dreaming.

beautiful irises, Jan.

Jan, both are fab but pink always catches my eye! Beautiful!

okay, I am just plain jealous. And I must be doing something really wrong because I don't even have 100 days of bloom, let alone 200, or re-bloom.

Ken, Love that noID.

Leslie, this was a really odd year. Don't judge your garden from this years activity. And new irises sometimes fail to perform as usual and a lot of yours were new. You will have a better bloom season in the future.... if the weather stops throwing tantrums.

Thanks, Linnea. It's toward the top of my top ten list, and I have a lot of it.

Will the "bulb" iris grow in your climate, Leslie ? They always count for the first 2-3 weeks of my season. (they're cute little guys , too ! )

I planted some reticulatas last fall and enjoyed them while the crocus were blooming. If I can grow them I think Leslie can.

Are Dutch and bulb the same? I grow Dutch here....from those little bags at Wal Mart or Lowes. Zone 8. At least I think it's called Dutch??

Yes, the "Dutch" iris are a "bulb" type. There are also the reticulates ,danfordae, English, and several more (my computer refuses to let me spell these species names the way I want to ). The I. reticulate are the first to bloom (at least here), being about 2 weeks earlier than the MDB's. My bearded "re bloom" season is always longer than the spring bloom, but, of course, there are never more than one, or two ,in bloom at the same time, while in the spring, pretty much the whole bed area is in bloom. And, if you want to get REAL technical, there are the "other" irids.....crocus, glads, and a few others.....I grow those, but don't count them into the iris season.

None of those little bulb types from Walmart bloomed here. I could go check for foliage, but no flowers happened.

Those I think are mostly dutch iris. I have never seen the early, early ones sold at Wal-Mart. I get mine through specialty bulb catalogs.

I do have Dutch Iris. They grow foilage and bloom at the same time as the dwarfs, then the foilage dies back, regrows in the fall just to die back in the winter, then start growing again in the spring. I keep hearing that the Dutch Iris die out after a while but these guys are rather the opposite. They just keep coming back. Now if they would also increase I would be happy.

My season is dwarfs, Dutch, TB's, LA's then Japanese. They all overlap, especially this year because of the hot weather.

My Dutchs increased some. I had to relocate them and found extra bulbs attached.