These I loosely call 'heirloom' irises; I got them from the yard across
the street when my friend bought it about twelve years ago. They had
clearly been there 30-40 years or longer. They're not as fancy as some
today but still have nice color and when I put in the new landscape a
couple years ago and added many more irises, I kept a few for
sentimental reasons. These I did not keep. They were bits and pieces of
rhizome dug out of the beds to make room for others (I moved the
original bed and uprooted them all). They ended up under the enormous
50-year-old 24' wide, 12' deep, 6' high yews on the side yard in what I
ambitiouly called my 'compost pile', where I had been throwing leaves
and other yard waste for years (of course without bothering to turn,
etc.). Well, the next year in the spring, in preparation for more
landscaping, I dug out probably 75 gallons of fabulously rich 'compost'
from my years of piling. In the process I found a bunch of the iris
scraps growing with new leads and trying to make a go of it under the
dense shade there. I took them and threw them around the"no stopping to
corner" sign where we had been piling grass clippings to cut down on the
grass and weeds and the weedwhacking.

Here they are two years later, just finishing up blooming. I spent the
next ten minutes after taking the pic pulling out the nasty weed vine we
have here which looks sort of like swedish ivy and will take over the
world if not savagely beaten back. We have another weed vine, equally
virulent, which we call pea vine but it is easier to control in some
aspects beacuse it doesn't usually grow in the grass and is a climber
rather than a creeper.

On Fri, 09 May 2008 12:48:44 -0400, tenman wrote:

These I loosely call 'heirloom' irises; I got them from the yard across
the street when my friend bought it about twelve years ago. They had
clearly been there 30-40 years or longer. They're not as fancy as some
today but still have nice color and when I put in the new landscape a
couple years ago and added many more irises, I kept a few for
sentimental reasons. These I did not keep. They were bits and pieces of
rhizome dug out of the beds to make room for others (I moved the
original bed and uprooted them all). They ended up under the enormous
50-year-old 24' wide, 12' deep, 6' high yews on the side yard in what I
ambitiouly called my 'compost pile', where I had been throwing leaves
and other yard waste for years (of course without bothering to turn,
etc.). Well, the next year in the spring, in preparation for more
landscaping, I dug out probably 75 gallons of fabulously rich 'compost'
from my years of piling. In the process I found a bunch of the iris
scraps growing with new leads and trying to make a go of it under the
dense shade there. I took them and threw them around the"no stopping to
corner" sign where we had been piling grass clippings to cut down on the
grass and weeds and the weedwhacking.

Here they are two years later, just finishing up blooming. I spent the
next ten minutes after taking the pic pulling out the nasty weed vine we
have here which looks sort of like swedish ivy and will take over the
world if not savagely beaten back. We have another weed vine, equally
virulent, which we call pea vine but it is easier to control in some
aspects beacuse it doesn't usually grow in the grass and is a climber
rather than a creeper.
My grandmother in Virginia, back in fifties used to call that stuff
" Creeping Charlie" it would cover acres and acres and if you let it
go all the outbuilding and sheds around.

In message , tenman
writes

These I loosely call 'heirloom' irises; I got them from the yard

[ A MIME image / jpeg part was included here. ]


Sometimes it's best to grow what grows - your clump looks healthy and it
looks good.

--
Sue ]