Yeah -- I think I'll just go ahead and cut them............

Let us know if they make it indoors, Mary Ann!

There has been a lot of light frosts here, but the iris seem to be okay for the moment.

Temps dropping fast! Just finished covering all the rebloomer stalks in all gardens will bamboo stakes and old blankets. Dang it, I wanna see a bloom and this freeze tonight WILL NOT stop the show. Rain to follow tomorrow and mild temps again.

Good luck , Gabe ! I think all of mine got *it* last night....they looked REAL limp, this morning, anyway. I will wait a few days, though, before I cut them back.....*just in case*

pulled out 3 old azalea bushes by myself...if i had to wait for DH it maybe next year before it got done. i want to get the beds ready for the irises i have in pots this year.

i planted over 15 garlic separated into cloves along the fence line and throughout the beds next to the irises. hope that deters or keeps the gophers away from the rhizomes.

we've also had something digging holes on our lawns about 3 - 4 " diameter with no mounds of dirt surrounding the openings. the holes are deep and it looks like old excavated gopher tunnels, but cannot imagine what are that small. or where all the dirt from those holes have been moved. we've set cinch traps, but nothing. and the strangest thing, is the lawn looks like it's been cut all around the opening of the hole. any ideas? what critter could this be?

what do ground squirrel or rabbit holes look like? mia (ever watchful terrier). didn't seem too interested except to acknowledge there are holes, did a cursory sniff in it and walked away. in the past, if it was a gopher, she would dig up the lawn to unearth the critter. we had to discourage this behavior because our lawn looked a mess.

Iris meeting instead. Photos from convention. Yea!

All blankets removed from stalks.Only dropped to 33°f and so much humidity there wasn't any frost

Today I'm raking up leaves again. It rained a drop or two but nothing really yet. My fingertips are freezing so I needed a warmup break.
Note to self. Never plant in an enclosed area with only 10 in spaces in rows. Had to buy a 8 inch rake for this. Leaf blower is just too strong.

Spent the weekend raking leaves before the rain today (Monday). I have giant willow oaks and those leaves are much easier to handle when very dry. I blew the leaves and pine straw out of five of the iris beds, then weeded them.

Also mapped the larger of the two new beds. As I mentioned in the Goners thread - I forgot to put the marker in for one of them. Dang. All the iris are looking good so far in this bed. The Tree Ring bed, Long bed, Front garden and Spoon Bed will all need to be lifted, tilled and replanted after bloom time. The tree rootlets are taking over after all the rain we had. Don't expect a great showing bloomwise in these beds next spring. Expect a lot of work though!

There are still a lot of leaves left on the trees here (typically they've all fallen by the beginning of November). I expect they will fall pretty quickly now because we've had hard frosts the last few nights- it was 28F this morning when I checked. I think I'll wait till they've all fallen to start raking out the beds.

Wish I could, but the sheer amount of leaves means that while I raked this weekend, my final raking will probably be in December. The maples have lots of leaves left, and the oaks have only lost about half of theirs. There are hundreds of tiny acorns all over now. The trees produced copious amounts this year. I still get a kick out of the fact that these huge 80 & 100 foot tall trees produce tiny little acorns less than half the size of a regular acorn. But they are a danger underfoot nonetheless.

I've also been clearing leaves but I do each bed by hand, no rake or leaf blower. It means that I get to personally inspect all 800+ rhizomes before the winter, but also is exhausting.

I love oak trees (our national tree), but not so much the acorns - in France they root really easily and very quickly put down deep roots, becoming difficult to remove without digging really deeply, which of course disturbs whatever other plants are in the area. So if yours just sit on the surface, you must be doing something right!

Hadn't thought about it before, but we don't have the same problem in England, where we have more and much bigger oaks.

Today I saw a bloom stalk on Joy Returns - a 2016 intro by Robin Shadlow






and admired new growth in one of the beds

The furry residents accompanied me:



My Regal Knave

and Chico and Tasha followed me around too

Liz - I usually hand clean, but we have been very dry so the leaves were easy to blow. I didn't use the blower on the newest planted bed.

Jan - Your iris are really growing! I notice you use wood chips/mulch around the iris. Do you have any issues with the iris because of that? I sometimes wonder if a light layer of wood chips would be beneficial during the hot garden months where I am to keep the soil from baking/cracking.

I've been thinking I'll go back to mulching with bark mulch again. I had always mulched until I found out bearded irises perform better without it (those I already had performed well, but I wanted to baby the newer varieties). Several of my news irises went into a new bed that is mulched, and those look the happiest of all the new additions. I think the moisture retention and weed prevention is making the difference here. I've always been careful to keep mulch off the rhizomes too.

Leslie, the wood chips are intended just for the paths, but sometimes they migrate!

Neal - I was thinking of putting mulch or wood chips in the bed with open rings around each rhizome. A couple of the gardens get lots of hot sun, so the moisture retention would be a good thing. Glad you mentioned weed prevention. Who does not love NOT having to weed!