There's Not Much Time Left

There's not much time left to get all that outside work done, is there? The leaves are starting to fall around here, and that's when it gets difficult.
I have been putting in mums for color - so far I think I've bought 12, and I had 6 that made it through the winter from last year. When we lived in PA we had the nicest purple mums, and I took some with me when we first moved to NY State 25 years ago. I haven't had that color in years now, and I never see them around here. Last week we were visiting in western PA so I went in search of my old color, and sure enough I found some. I know that all the commercial mums we see come from the same couple of growers that cover the whole market, but for some reason there's still some variance in color that can't be accounted for.

Since I haven't written for so long, I have quite a backlog of things to talk about. Never fear, I won't try to do it all at once! My biggest job of the season this year has been dividing the iris. I sure had a ton of it to do. For years and years I've had my iris arranged by color - the blue and white over here, and the red over there, etc. Well, I decided to take all of that apart and create a bed of mixed colors. It took many hours and days to accomplish that, and I still have one bed that needs to be taken apart if time and weather permit. I generally planted back 3-5 of each color. The extras I gave away. Now we'll wait and see how it looks next June.

As my little instructional aside I will add that I always have had a problem with iris borers, and I used to treat the rhizomes for that by soaking them in a 10% Clorox solution before replanting them. This year I skipped that step and just washed them off and let them age for a few days, out of the sun. I have a Bayer grub control product that can be used year 'round, and it's supposed to help with the iris borers, too. So I sprinkle that as I replant them and just hope for the best.