Iris Season!

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One of Van Gogh's many iris paintings.

Finally, the tall bearded irises in my backdoor bed are blooming. They opened sometime last night and this morning when we came out the door, there they were, glistening in the morning sunshine. That long wait was totally worth it. Several of these iris rhizomes were rescued from the lawn which had crept into their overly shady bed. I dug them in the middle of a misting spring rain, in the very chill world of mud and drizzle that is the early year. And the incident inspired this Poetry Friday post.

My purple veined iris that came with our house.

I think the irises I was digging and transplanting that day are these lush, purple veined ones, and I think the fluttery lilac one below is a variety I ordered from the excellent folks at Shreiner's Iris Gardens, along with a brilliant butter yellow which I hope is still coming.

If you're looking for some new irises, I heartily recommend them. The only caveat is that you'll get lost drooling over the photos on their web site. If you're a novice gardener, looking for some recommendations, bearded irises are a good pick, they're beautiful, often fragrant, make beautiful cut flowers and given sunshine they are carefree and unfussy. I love them for all these reasons and also for the fact that they are so historically enduring. Irises are one of those flowers that often outlives houses or at least the owners of said houses and will still be bravely blooming every spring, even if their good gardeners have gone on to contribute to the soil themselves. I love a resourceful romantic, even if the romantic is a plant.

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Monet's iris path. Someday, I'll visit.

Next iris task is to paint my own rendition of them, after the great masters of brush and palette. I have in mind to try my hand at this beautiful basket of cut irises for sale that I photographed in a garden France during our trip to Europe in 2008.

I've been thinking about it for years, way before I "could" paint. A and I used to play this game somewhat perpetually called "If I Could Paint" wherein we'd call out to the other person and point when a particularly heart-tugging image hit us and we wished we were able to wield a brush. It still cracks me up to think that suddenly one day, I discovered I could paint...I have years of catch-up ahead of me. That game set me up with a long list of future subjects.

Related articles

• A Dummies Guide to Growing Irises (shantara.wordpress.com)
• Coffee Table Book of Irises (flowergardengirl.wordpress.com)
• Have I Told You I Like Irises? (allchainedup.wordpress.com)

Bits of Lovely

Everything is okay again....because I found mushrooms. Heh. I do like foraging a lot and boy do I instantly feel like all is well with the world after running into a giant cluster of wild food accidentally. This particular mushroom is most often called Chicken-of-the-Woods but when I was growing up I was taught to call them Sulphur Mushrooms because of the particular shade of yellow on the underside of the caps.

And our farmer's market opened....well it opened last week but I was just days from delivering and not quite up to attending so, we went for the first time this week and caught the strawberries debuting. Mmm....am so happy to be back at the market. It was very fun to have some of the farmer's recognize us and be excited about the baby....one of my favorite vendors gave me two peonies to take home as a baby gift! People are so nice. (And you all know how I feel about peonies!)

We had a two week check-up with the babe and he's even bigger....up to 9 lbs and 12 oz. now from his birth weight of 8lbs 14oz. I feel like a very good mommy. 

And then...our incredible neighbor came over and brought a picnic lunch for children, a grown-up mommy lunch just for me and dinner and then took my boys out to the yard for playing with a giant kick-ball, bubble blowing with huge wands, fed them and her own daughter with the picnic she brought and then read them all a storybook as a wind down so I could take them right in and tuck them in for naps. Why am I not friends with this neighbor? I must get to know her. Seriously folks, people are so nice sometimes that it hurts.

*grin* My giant iris bloomed for the first time! Isn't it pretty? I've always wanted to grow one of these and this is my first blossom. Am very proud.

This is what happens when your mommy is a blogger. Your splash sessions in the bath with your kid brother get all paparazzi'd. Heh.

And here was the crowning bit of lovely. This afternoon Ru comes up to me....

"Mommy. I have an idea. Lets write a book. We are such good helpers to you that we should make a book about it and call it "We Help Mommy" and then we can send it to all our friends and aunts and uncles and we can be in it and we can make words inside."

Awesome. We're authors! Just like that.

"What do you say Mommy?"

I think we may have a book project in our future. Heh. Stay tuned. I am envisioning a really fun rainy day project.