More iris garden

It’s iris season!  I want to post a gazillion pictures but I’ll spare you and post just a few (below).  They’re so pretty and they’re popping up everywhere! I am adding a [...]

Revere tall bearded iris

Iris season is in full swing and I couldn’t be happier.  Every morning I can’t wait to rush outside to see what new variety is blooming.  This morning I was particularly delighted to [...]

How the milkweed is doing

You may recall that last year I wrote a post about the sharp decline of the monarch butterfly and what home gardeners can do to help stop it.  (Click here to see that piece). What I did was find [...]

Old Black Magic

I have a weakness for dramatic-looking flowers (being a dramatic flower myself). One of the many reasons it makes me happy when my Old Black Magic iris comes up each year:

Garden update

Another rainy day in NJ, which makes my gardener’s heart smile. Everything is bright green and beautiful. Some random notes: I am on the lookout for whether I’ll have iris in bloom by [...]

WHAT THE WHAT

People, there is SNOW ON MY DAFFODILS ON APRIL 15th.  Make that ten minutes into the 16th.  Do I live in Alaska?  The Arctic Circle?  NO.  Gardening hardiness zone 6B, meaning… Forget what [...]

Daffodils and Forsythia

It is officially spring when I can make a bouquet of daffodils and forsythia for my living room.  A slice of sunshine right on my antique reclaimed factory cart coffee table.  Few things can lift [...]

The Butterfly Garden

Last year, I went totally overboard buying iris.  I was handsomely repaid with an amazing show in just about every color of the rainbow.  I did my best to document the bloom time of the iris but [...]

Epicenter tall bearded iris

Okay, it’s official.  The irises are popping up faster than I can write about them.  This morning when I left the house, the only one that was new was War Chief (finally, a red in my red, [...]

Alizes Tall Bearded Iris

Type: Tall Bearded (TB) Style: Amoena Height: 33″ Color: Blue Originator: Cayeux, Richard Year: 1989 Bloom Season: Early midseason This is one of those irises that looks pretty in pictures [...]

A love letter to my weeds

Dear weeds: Like with all my love relationships, life with you has sometimes been complex.  Sure, I’ve yanked you out of the ground.  But, in my defense, I’ve never sprayed you with toxic [...]

On Vacation From My Flowers

I go on a 9 day vacation and come back to a barely recognizable garden!  I feel like the mother who is forced to go away for a long period of time to come back and find that her children have [...]

Hoofmarked

Rapacious marauding gang of horned miscreants ate every single tulip shoot clean to the ground, even dressed as they were with deer repellent.  They even took a chunk out of an iris plant, which [...]

The Great Iris Project

I can’t remember when a bearded iris flower first caught my eye.  As a young gardener, I had been a rose girl.  Roses are showy, fragrant, the obvious choice for a twentysomething [...]