Sunday, April 23, 2017

A Gift if Irises

In the past year I have been helping an elderly lady in town with yard work on my time off.  It has been nice getting to know her and I enjoy the hands on work in her yard.  This spring she decided that she needed to thin out her Iris patch and asked me if I would be interested in taking some.  I told her that I would be right over.  I ended up digging out four clumps of irises that should be white, yellow and purple.  Once I got home, I broke up the clumps into individual plants as best I could and arranged them around my small patch of spring bulbs that I planted last fall.  If they all survive, this flower bed will be quite lovely when they all start to bloom.

Right now they look a little beat up from their recent move.  Digging them out and separating the bulbs was pretty rough on them, but I hope that with a little tlc they will bounce back and start to grow again.  I mulched them in with a heavy layer of grass clippings to keep down the weed pressure since this bed was previously taken over by ragweed and cheatgrass.  I am hoping that the irises do well here and spread out to fill in the whole bed so I won't have to worry about weeding it anymore.  Now that the hard part is over I just need to keep up on watering it and give it time.  My reward will be a lovely colorful bed of spring blooms.

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