The answer is, not much.
It was pretty cool today. I went outside early to check out the maiden bloom on a monstrosity of a daylily seedling (no good news there), but had to retreat indoors (after briefly talking to my garden helpers). I didn't go back outside again until shortly after noon, when it had warmed up enough that I was able to take Warp out for a walk.
Perhaps it has finally settled in, or maybe it is just all the rain that we had this winter, but my sole David Austin rose 'Lady Emma Hamilton' is looking beautiful right now. Except that something has been breaking the branches up high.
(Or maybe it was the recent winds that did it?) So that needs tidying up (but I have learned the hard way that any rose I can reach (not the climbers), I need to prune and take care of myself, so I will have to do that in the next few days).
Close to 'Lady Emma...', a trio of Flower Carpet Amber roses are in bloom and looking lovely. I have one more of that rose just outside the Moon Garden, where it has somehow, suddenly, grown tremendously large. It has to have been from all of the rain that we had...
I checked out a potted salvia that I had my helpers plant out, and at first I thought that they had planted some mystery plant
, because the leaves were so large it was (at first) not recognizable as a salvia!
But that salvia has been sitting in a shady (and protected) spot since the middle of December, so I guess that the leaves grew unnaturally large because of that. I think that I'm going to have to go give that a hard prune... I hope it survives it. We put it out behind the daylily seedling beds, so it is going to be subject to both some shade and root competition from the redwoods, but I have another one of the same kind ('Hot Lips') planted several feet away, so if I can get it growing properly after being pruned, it should do okay. (There is a narrowing gap there between the property line wrought iron fence and the wooden seedling beds; I am hoping that I will have enough room to get back in there behind the beds to do the necessary work. Planting that salvia there is deliberately creating an obstacle, but we need a little screening and greenery and color there (and that salvia needs a home), so I'll just have to deal with it.)
Over in the Moon Garden, either the gopher(s) got killed off (either from our tunnel gas attacks or it was the gopher that fell into the pool), or else the vole baskets are holding up, or else gophers don't like
Osteospermum, because the two new plants we put out a week or so ago are still there and doing fine. Around them, 2 of the white Carpet Roses and a 'Bolero' rose are in bloom, so there is a blaze of white. I yanked out some of the awful lemon-yellowish licorice plant (right now I'm leaving 2 in, but 1 of those may go too), and then had to stop my helpers from replanting those spots with the potted
Spirea that I had plunked down to look at. It's hard to say how many plants of that will be too few, and how many will be too much (and how many to plant in which bare spot(s)) - I don't want to end up swamping the daylilies again. That said, I fear another return trip to the nursery is inevitable, but after walking Warp, I was just too tired to do it today.
(I'd be showing you garden photos from today, but I somehow fried my SD card reader, and it is a pain plugging the USB cable into the camera itself, not to mention it sucks dry the camera battery, so right now the only images I have on the computer are from early this morning (my daylily seedling) and earlier. I'm going to have to get a new card reader.)
Iris wise, things are winding down, but that's actually (for me) a good thing, because the daylilies are starting to ramp up. I'm a lazy sort; deadheading irises is a chore, deadheading daylilies is a chore, and I don't want to be doing both chores at the same time!
I'll leave you with a picture I took yesterday, of 'Gilt By Association':
Lessons learned from this iris season (maybe we need a new thread for this? ):
1. Single rhizomes of irises can bloom when grown in a one gallon pot, even if that pot is then held inside a ceramic pot (which could make it hotter). Fertilizer and adequate water (with saucers under the pots) are required.
2. One gallon potted irises can be blown over, even if they are placed inside a ceramic pot.
Location, and the size of the fans and the height of the stalk, are all factors. (No two gallon potted irises have yet blown over, with or without ceramic pots.)
3. While clothing the plastic potted irises with ceramic pots make them look more presentable, this double potting also makes a hiding place for slugs and snails.
4. It is possible to add an annual plant into the 2 gallon pots, to make things look more interesting. (There is a small white annual, spring flowering daisy,
Chrysanthemum paludosum , which is good for this purpose. It has a secondary purpose, in being a snail warning device, as the slugs and snails like it too.)
5. Some TB irises are so tall that the bloom stalks need support. (I already knew that with 'Sweet Musette', but I blamed it on the shady locations it was in. But the new irises are in sunnier spots, and some of their stalks flopped and broke at the base.)
6. A good solution (for those with scarce sunny space) for BB, IB and SDB irises is planting them in one gallon pots. When they are in bloom, you can put one of those pots into a ceramic pot on a patio table, and it will look nice. (When it is out of bloom, you can stash the pot in some out-of-the-way but sunny-enough spot to grow until it is time to divide; divide and repot and then grow until the next time it blooms.)
7. Shallow plastic window boxes, on the other hand, are not a good growing solution for the SDB irises (let alone the bigger ones). (Leave the boxes to grow annuals, or else to grow seedlings until they are big enough to pot up or transplant out elsewhere.)
8. If you are going to co-plant irises in near proximity, try to plant one that has Purple Based Foliage and one that does not. It will be easier to separate them out when it is time to divide.
9. 'That's All Folks' is an attention hog. It will vie for your attention against most other irises anywhere near it. The only ones that seem able to hold their own (in holding your attention, at least for a while), are tall, large flowered, blinding white ones like 'Mesmerizer'.
10. Check all your incoming irises as to PBF, or not, when you receive them. Make sure the foliage (PBF, or not) matches the description. This
may help earlier sort out the NOIDs, so you can complain to (er, inquire of) the nursery early. (My 'Pinkity' may not be. I did a poll of everyone else here who has it. Of those that responded (including myself), half of us have plants that have PBF, and half do not. The hybridizer description and the AIS description do not mention PBF foliage.
)
