Sue's Irises

Two years ago, our friend Sue from California came to visit us for a while. She lives in the Sierra Foothills above Sacramento and has a pretty good-sized property up there. One of the things she really enjoys about where she lives is her yard and the hundreds of irises and daffodils that come up every year.

Irises along the north fence. Please ignore the weeds.

When they get too crowded, she digs them up an re-distributes them so that every year there are more and more of them, and the show is always changing.

When she got to our house, she noticed that our irises needed to be divided, so she got right to work -- that's what I call a super house guest! We tilled up a new spot on the north side for some of them so we could see them from the living room. While these are our irises in France, we'll always think of them as Sue's irises.

Part of the re-constituted row along the back walk.

The first year they didn't really do much. This year they're looking real good. I read somewhere that it takes three years for irises to get well established. The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap. Or something like that. If that's true, then next spring should be great. And there are still a bunch more to divide.

The well-o-weeds and our table, just before lunch.
There's still a lot of cleaning up to do.

Saturday was our warmest day of the year so far and we celebrated by firing up the barbecue and having lunch outside. It was terrific and oh so pleasant. And we saw a couple of hot-air balloons go over in the morning and again in the evening. It's that time of year.

Pay no attention to the fuzzy quality of these photos. Wine was being consumed at the time. ;)