#last summer flowers

[wigglebox]

Destiel Hot Summer - Floral 🌷

[geopsych]

Catalpa time! For a very brief time they are glorious. Here’s a sampling of pictures I took this morning at the park. All 3 catalpa trees are in bloom although at different stages. Blossoms were floating down the stream.

Tell me if you would rather have me post some separately.

[feralchaton]

Sound on 🔊

[cosmicheartz]

Leaving me here on my own

[megpricephotography]

Flynn in a field of flowers...

[feral-violet]

[therefugeofbooks]

spring days 🌱

[perfectlyscentedturtle-7]

Sunny Saturday!☀️🩵🌸

[the-forest-library]

[mspaint-flower]

「　歌鬼　」

[slavic-roots-western-mind]

[heretherebebookdragons]

Sunflowers & bee friends <3

[switchoffthestars]

2024 march/april knitting

(details & ravelry links below the cut)

Cargill sweater (aug 6 2023 - apr 24 2024; hobbii highland wool in '34 ruby port' & knitting for olive soft silk mohair in 'bordeaux')

Morning glance in lace (aug 16 2023 - mar 13 2024; midara haapsalu shawl 28/2 in '940 black')

Billa lace (mar 16 2024 - apr 20 2024; yarnitaly merino laceweight in 'avocado')

Poet socks (feb 12 2024 - mar 2 2024; hobbii happy feet in '34 turquoise')

Vanilla socks (mar 2 2024 - apr 26 2024; lana grossa meilenweit merino hand-dyed in '7001 tata')

WIPs: Clown tamer socks, vanilla socks (short) and Lindisfarne

[pearl-kite]

Want to see some neat things about how irises grow?

Remember when I dug up and divided ALL of my irises at my parents' place a few years back? And how I ended up with 50 rhizomes, and I had bought 9 more just a bit before that?

Well, my mom wants to try to amend the soil because it's not great. Most of the irises have just been surviving, but not well enough to bloom, and everything else planted in the area struggles similarly. In order to amend the soil, though, I needed to dig them all up.

Again.

I dug up 44 rhizomes this time, which is honestly a bit better than I expected. I knew that not all of the ones I put in were going to survive, but I was still surprised by how many I just dug up today.

Anyway, the learning bit!

So irises aren't bulbs, they're rhizomes. Each year they put up leaves at one end, and over time they kind of end up migrating in that direction. If they do really well at gathering and storing energy, instead of just continuing forward, they'll fork, putting up leaves on two sides and a stalk with blooms in the center. The following year, the pattern continues, going forward from each side of that fork. If a rhizome does REALLY well, you'll end up with a bunch of forks spreading out.

The one on the left has survived, but not gone very far, and the white at the end shows that I accidentally broke some of the old rhizome off when I was digging it back up. It also happens to be a dwarf variety, so the rhizome is smaller to begin with; all my other photos are of intermediate and tall bearded irises with much larger rhizomes.

The one on the right has done well enough to grow forward for a few years, with the oldest of the rhizome at the bottom (still healthy and full of stored energy!) and the newest year's growth at the top. Looking at the rhizome itself, I'd guess that one is about 4 years (which makes sense, 'cause I think I did the splitting back in 2020).

The one on the left bloomed this year; you can see the flower stalk dried out in the center, and the new fork in the rhizome to the sides. Next year, they'll continue in those two directions, and it won't go forward from the stalk any longer.

The one on the right bloomed a few years back, and though it kept growing forward from there, it hasn't bloomed since. The other side of the fork also died off, and it's now only growing in one direction again.

Last but most certainly not least we have THIS beast. This one has bloomed the last two or three years in a row. I honestly can't tell if the guy at the bottom right is part of the same rhizome or another one I planted too close that got subsumed by this monster, because it took ten minutes to get most of the clay off and there was still more. I'll need to actually rinse it off with the hose to really see if it's all one plant or two.

But I'm 95% sure that this guy is going to bloom again next year because of those nubs down along the bottom. They were below the soil, and they're too thick to be new roots, so I'm guessing that's what future growth looks like. Honestly, this guy should probably be divided, but I also don't want to ruin the chance of it blooming next year, so I'm going to put him back in the dirt as is and maybe divide next year after blooming season.

Anyway, irises are my favorite, and I think it's intriguing how they work. I'm hoping that we can get the soil a bit more balanced and that they'll do better after replanting them, because even though I just dug up 44, we only had 4 or 5 bloom this year. They aren't thriving in the soil as-is, because for as long as they've been established we should have had more blooming than that. It was still the best year since dividing them, though.

I've brought a bunch of them over to my apartment and I'm going to try them out in containers, mostly the dwarf varieties I had. ONE of the dwarfs bloomed this year and it was gorgeous, but I'm hoping the rest will do better in new soil with some extra attention.

[mysticalmariesworld]

wildflowers! ⋆🔮｡‧˚ʚ ❀ ɞ˚‧｡⋆💐

[youcanthandelthetruth]