Anyone taking sixteen years to build a home and landscape a hillside is a reasonably patient person and I describe myself as patient. I can give a young child my day but not a minute for adults who don't walk their talk. Recently I've been walking my talk; if I want to be "Lil Ole Iris Lady of Norton Way," there's much work to be done in August and September. I'm hoping to give away a few hundred rhizomes but if there's no takers, I'll find some place in this wilderness to transplant.
I gained a bit of iris experience in MO where these plants can be thrown onto asphalt, driven over by dump trucks, and continue to grow and bloom. It's a bit harder in a high desert environment.
I bought my first iris for Badboulder in Freeport, IL at a Tuddy Baker festival and planted it as a commemorative to a work offer I received on that trip which allowed us to move to Yarnell ten years ahead of schedule. It has flourished. Every time I give some away, I'm blessed one hundred fold. My neighbors now proudly display Tuddy Bakers. It is the ugliest iris I've ever owned but shows well mixed with lupines.
Our soil is poor and must be amended. In addition to steer manure, I mix a handful of bone meal at the bottom of the planting hole. Coyotes can zero in on bone meal and find it tasty enough to eat with dirt. They throw the iris plants aside and I replant. Eventually I win. This week my own dog, a springer spaniel, tried the bone meal and dirt diet. My weekend's work, an enlarged iris bed lies in ruins. That dog laid in the shade and watched me alternately pick axe and hose down the brick-hard earth, shovel and mix the improved soil, dig out and divide the iris, and plant with a foot of space so this procedure wouldn't need to be repeated for at least three years. This well-fed dog bided his time until I left for a day of shopping in Prescott, then dug like a fiend and ate like a coyote.
Just give an iris the morning sun and they grow tall with extra large blooms here in Yarnell. Over the past sixteen years a neighbor has told me sixteen times that iris don't need extra water; I ignore her and continue to water once a month in winter if we receive no rain, once a week during March. April and May. My iris are luxurious, hers barely survive. Nothing eats them at Badboulder, however javalina will dig them up and throw them about just to reaffirm that an iris is not edible.
My biggest iris problem has been development. When we applied for electricity fourteen years ago, we were assured that indeed a line could not be buried, even at our expense, and we sport a steel electrical pole beside our front gate. It is not charming but we need electricity. Fast forward ten years and the new development to our north cannot have a pole, they must connect to our pole and bury their line. I must move or lose a large iris garden to accommodate their backhoe. Our great neighbors who incidentally gave me the pick-up bed full of iris in this garden, offered me space on their roadside and I saved the iris.
During my chemo year, the electric company sent out a representative to inform us they must clear away the chaparral on our south roadside. David told them I was extremely fond of the manzanita and asked if they could leave it. They said no but in fact did leave it intact. They also left me a huge mess to clean up. As soon as my strength returned, I began to establish a wildflower garden bordered by iris. I am hopeful that I have seen the last of the electric company in my iris space. My goal is to keep the brush cut back severely enough that it will eventually die. Yesterday I spent the entire day transplanting my favorite orange iris into the space that the electric company left me. Two are vivid orange, the third an orange cream with giant blossoms.
FROM THE KNOTHOLE: If only iris were edible.....If only iris were the secret ingredient in some amazing medical cure.....If only there was a lucrative market for iris.....Oh well, guess we will just look at them. Lucky us. It seems that iris will survive, if not thrive, in most of the nearly 40 locations we have lived during our married life. Often, a patch of iris was the personal mark left by Badboulderlady at many of our homes when we moved on to some other spot around the block or around the world.
a parting shot from bbman: Give me liberty or give me death. Patrick Henry, March 23, 1975, at the Virginia Convention
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