Don't Complain and Don't Explain

The above title for today's post means "I know I'm behind in my blogging, just like I am in a lot of things right now!"

I am still working in my big garden in the yard. What started out as the usual major first weeding of the season became a bigger project as I decided to change the whole appearance of the garden. It has been, for years, put together as something like a cottage garden, with as many pretty perennials in it as would fit in the space. Now my tastes have changed and I want it to look neat and tidy, showing off the better plants and having a more artistic look.

Weeding is still the first priority, but as I do it I am taking out some things completely. For instance, last week I discovered one lonely blue and yellow iris growing next to a huge blue tall bearded "Grape Koolaid" variety. Well, I have plenty of the solid blue in other places, so that one is going to go and I will cultivate the blue and yellow, because it's the only one I have. I sure have trouble growing any iris of more than one color.. I've bought at least three Edith Wolfords and never managed to get one to bloom.

Then someone gave me 6 miniature rose bushes. Two of them are quite large and the rest are small. In order to plant them I had to spend all of Sunday morning digging up an area next to our one other rose, a climber, so that was another day of non-weeding on the books. Oops! Now I'm complaining and explaining.

I hope that anyone who reads this is making more progress than I am on garden projects this year so far. Let me know what you're doing and what your favorite colors of iris are. I have Beverly Sills, which is a nice strong variety in my garden, and a dark red one that I think is called Sultan's Palace or something like that. The rest of mine are pretty standard colors - oh, and one really nice white ruffled one. DK