This greeted me as I went out to water the back gardens this morning. I have a love-hate relationship with irises. I do think the flowers are beautiful, but then things look raggedy when the first blossoms die. The second round of blooming is accompanied by the dead remains of earlier flowers. I'm not sure if you can deadhead them to make things look better. My neighbors have a bunch of yellow and purple irises that still have lovely flowers, but the dead dregs of the ones that have died make the plants look shabby.
My standing garden is now full of herbs. The ones with the dark orange flowers are tangerine sage. I'm a sucker for most anything with a citrus name. While things look crowded it the picture, there's plenty of room for expansion. One of the tomatoes died; Paul injured it when he put it into its bag, so today we are replacing it with one that Rachael gave me. I have no idea if it is a Sungold or another variety; it will have to be a surprise. The rest of the tomatoes are finally going in the ground today.
Mulch. I need mulch because the ground dries out too soon and weeds seem to magically appear overnight--hundreds of them. (If only the plants I want grew so well.) I found a place in Christiansburg and it's only $19 a cubic yard; I need three cubic yards. Delivery, however, is $50. That seems a steep price to come about ten miles. Last evening Paul and I measured all of the various beds in inches and then I had to convert it all to square feet and then use an online chart to see how much we need in total. That is going to be a big job, but I want to spread the mulch myself to ensure that nothing gets buried that shouldn't be. Each of my plants is dear to me, and I just don't trust someone else--except for Paul--to do the job right.
Back to yard work...
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