(no subject)

[which_chick]

It's summer. It used to be spring, late spring, but it is now summer. The heat is hot and sticky and relentless. We've had a real thunderstorm, with high winds and lightning and everything. The horses have gone from when are they ever going to shed out to sleek, fat creatures who smell faintly of sweat because the temperature and relative humidity are both over 80 and they don't cool very effectively in that climate. Meatly, in particular, looks like complete hell. I'll have to get a picture so that you can see how huge she is.

In the garden, June is bustin' out all over.






The two views of yellow flower, above, are an Iris pseudocoras. They're relatively easy to grow and don't need much effort. I like the heavy veining on these and they're not something everyone has. They start to bloom about a week and a half to two weeks after your average german bearded iris.




The above is Gerald Darby, another kind of iris. He's got purple-tinted stems and, like I. pseudocoras, above, survived the Great Borer Attack of 2003. Many others perished, but these two beardless iris lived along with I. graminea (a species iris) and some purple siberian iris that I no longer remember the name of. They could be Caesar's Brother. I dunno. Whatever they are, they are healthy sumbitches.




The above are the two sensible colors of peony I have. I also have a garish pink, but those haven't bloomed yet. The red trumpet honeysuckle is covered in blooms, a fact that is making the hummingbirds reasonably happy. I sat on the stoop earlier this week, pulled off flowers, nipped the bottom end of each one carefully, and sucked out the nectar. There's a small drop per blossom, enough to taste the sweet but not more than that.

The chives are blooming, light purple balls indicating that whatever my gardener status may be, I should not be trusted with herbs. It's not my fault. Mom gave me chives and never bothered to ask me if I ate chives. They're reasonably well-behaved in their clump, though, so I don't worry too much about them. If they were mint, it'd be another story entirely. Mint... I can't eat the stuff fast enough, so I rip it out about once every two weeks.

Comments

[ornery-chick.livejournal.com]

Your irises look so very exotic to me! I really like that yellow one with the rusty veins, too. So bold and striking.

I like that light peony with the dark scalloping. That's very pretty.

I think my hot-pink peonies are possibly the same color as the ones you have that you said weren't a reasonable color. And if so, yes, they are quite insane, but I like 'em. My nearly-white ones smell better than my pink ones, though. Stronger and sweeter.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

The yellow ones are plentiful enough that I can divide them, if you'd like a corm or two. As the time-for-dividing is right after they're done blooming, now would be a good time to put in a request. :) They're pretty vigorous and I don't think they'd have any trouble growing for you. The plant is about mid-thigh high, the flowers a little higher, and it's pretty much unscented.

The white peony (with red bits) is probably Festiva Maxima, a common white peony cultivar. It does tend to flop over once the blooms open all the way, but I don't really mind peony-flopping. It doesn't have much of a scent, but that isn't something I depend on my peonies for. I like the look and feel of peonies, the silky petals against deep green foliage, the knobbly round sticky buds, the red-asparagus nature of the young shoots peeping up through the ground -- and what they smell like doesn't really enter into it. I have things that I keep for what they smell like, but those things are not peonies.

The disturbing piunk ones aren't open yet. *sigh* Another day or two, I guess. They'll get with the program eventually.

[ornery-chick.livejournal.com]

I'd definitely love to have a sample of those.

I could divvy out some of mine if there were any colors of my stuff you'd be interested in.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

If the picture of the ones labled as "bronze" (
http://conventioncostumes.asyoulikeitkc.com/gallery/albums/garden_geek/bronzeirises.sized.jpg) is reasonably-true (sort of a reddish-purple color), I could do with a couple (two or three fans, maybe) of those. I can send you I. pseudocoras (that's the yellow guy with the brown veins) in about two weeks, when it's done blooming. It's pretty tolerant, but it'll need watered some for the first year. (I don't water anything after the first year.)

Daffodils and narcissus, which I've also promised you, will have to wait until fall (end of September, here) but I'm glad to have found a home for some of them. I've got buckets and they truly do need to be thinned, so don't feel obligated on that front... I'm happy enough to not be throwing them out.

I also want, someday, to build a gardening catalog that does not contain the rare and choice but contains common and unkillable like, y'know, your standard blue flags, yellow daffodils, orange poppies, medium pink peonies, orange daylilies, yellow forsythia, light purple lilacs -- not specific, fancy-ass varieties, but the basic variety of each thing, the variety that is as tolerant and as unkillable as is possible. I'd want the default plants for each kind, if that helps.

It'd be a gardening catalog for nongardening people who wanted a couple of damn plants to bloom in their yards, year after year, with little-to-no effort. It'd have the kinds of plants that non-gardening people end up with after all the fancy, particular stuff that they've purchased dies off... they'd get to the same destination, only faster and more cheaply, with this catalog.

(There is a reason I am not in marketing.)

[ornery-chick.livejournal.com]

I like that idea. And I could totally contribute a few blue flags at least.

I can separate out some of those bronze ones. The color in the photos is pretty true. In some lights they look kind of puce, in others more reddish. They're deceptively complex on the color front, and you're welcome to a sample thereof.