Luminosity must have looked like a ray of sunshine in your garden this time of year, Polymerous!

It finally snowed here & I tried out cross country skiing with my husband as my instructor. That was fun.

Yes, Jan, 'Luminosity' was bright! It's in a bed with some Euryops which have also started blooming, and some Osteospermum 'Blue Eyed Beauty' which have put out a few flowers.

There is also some (not in bloom at the moment) Iberis in that bed, a newly planted lavender daylily ('English Lavender'), and the iris 'Sara's Beauty'. I have other iris in purple/violet to go into that bed, but at the moment they are all in pots. (There is some Verbena between the two bracketing Euryops at the back of the bed that I am dithering over yanking out, and what to replace them with if I do. I wanted to get that done before putting in the rest of the iris, but at this point it won't happen until spring, if then.)

A lavender daylily sounds beautiful! I'll have to look for it.

'English Lavender' supposedly has some rust resistance, but we'll see... I wanted a daylily that would fit the color theme. There is already a lot of yellow in that bed, "near-white" daylilies aren't really white, I grow few purple daylilies (the blooms don't hold up well in our climate), so lavender it was. (Many "lavender" daylilies really aren't... but this one supposedly is. Form-wise and beauty of bloom wise, one rarely goes wrong with a Stamile daylily - so long as it can handle our cool nights.)



All I did in the garden today was to go out and take a few pictures between the raindrops.

I also went out to the Back 40 to inspect my iris bed (still missing a few irises), because I saw something sticking up (from the house). Imagine my surprise:



'Grand Bargain', which I just received as a gift plant this year.

Also in bloom (not visible from the house) was 'Snow Day', but the blooms were not in great shape (one of the two stalks had flopped over; the blooms on the other stalk were ratty and worn).



One or two blooms? And which way is up? (Bloom on fallen stalk of 'Snow Day'.)

Wow - English Lavender is beautiful.

In the 20s here today.

Rain today, so I haven't been outside. If I am able to get out there, I want to put some ornaments up on the trees behind the house.

Yesterday I was out briefly, during which time I dead-leafed (and tore off rusty foliage on) some rusty daylilies (I still cringe at the thought; I always feel "unclean" during this process), and staked the fallen scape of 'Snow Day' (and deadheaded that iris as needed).

There are other things that really need to be done out there, so I guess it's just as well that it's raining. Not only do we need the rain, but I also have an endless list of things to be doing inside.

It's raining here too...a nice, soaking rain.

I also did some clean up of garbage throw in our yard. Someone had Little Caesar's pizza and breadsticks and didn't share!

How rude!

Have been cleaning out frost-damaged foliage on the irises to improve air-circulation now that we are above 0 C for a few days and it's raining - again...

Found two rhizomes (bought this year) with severe slug damage - in December!!

I'm observing the gardens from afar, we got another 5 inches of snow last night, more supposed to arrive today. The irises are snuggled under the snow now. Colder weather coming this week, sub zero on some days.

Yuck, Tom! Stay inside!

Temp in the 20s F.

just checking on the newbies in the beds....they are looking good so far...

Here's a photo of one of my beds. We had a lot of weather in the teens this past week.

Today I did a little deadheading (daylilies), a little dead-leafing (daylilies and irises), pruned a salvia, and started putting up ornaments on some of the back yard trees.

I would have taken a picture of 'Snow Day', but got distracted when our dog escaped out/under the back fence again. By the time we got him back, and I made an emergency run to OSH (hardware chain here) to get rebar (to hold the (chain link) fence down/in place), it was dark.

I don't know how much garden time I'm going to have tomorrow, and if the blooms will be in photogenic condition. We'll see.

The snow stopped last night ending up with another 7-8 inches with more coming on Friday maybe 10 more inches. I can still see the tops of the leaves yet. Temps to be in the single digits all next week with lows below zero.

I managed to do iris gardening inside today!

I set up the plant lights for my two little iris seedlings and checked on the rest - no more have germinated so far.

It's hard to imagine weather that severe just eight hours north of me, Tom. We've got pretty comfortable temps here right now -- high 40's, low 50's -- cold coming back in the middle of the week. But this morning I heard that on Saturday is going to be 60*!!!!! I don't like it to get that warm in the winter -- it confuses the plants and can start their engines too early. So I hope those temps don't stick around too long.

Shesh, and on Wednesday we are supposed to have a high of 17 and a low of -4