Pacific Coast Iris hybrids 2010, 2020

Hybrid Pacific Coast Iris, growing among hardy geraniums

Picture from May 16, 2010.

I'm mourning that I haven't seen any of these beautiful small irises around the house this year; there used to be several of them. And a particular loss, the beautiful white one with lavender and blue lines, that Cyndi gave me decades ago, from a Native Plant Society sale, is all gone. An idiot tenant had dug all of it's offspring out years ago, but there was one survivor - finally choked out by blackberries and neglect. The beautiful ground cover hardy geranium visible in this photo is almost gone too. It's shade tree had died, then they were dug out by the friend of a tenant, who thought he was weeding. They haven't recovered, not helped by being taken over by blackberries (mostly cut back now).

The tall purple iris just started blooming a few days ago, and the little white-with-blue-lines wild iris started blooming last week in the woods down the hill.

And the old-fashioned almost-wild roses down the hill by the highway just started blooming this week. They are always the earliest. And the lilacs. And I heard the first (Mountain?) chickadee song yesterday. 

May 1, 2020 There were lots of flowers on the tall dark red-violet iris in this area; last year's clearing was good for it. And the more sun from losing so many tall trees. There are still a few small plants of this beautiful small iris that should be in big clumps. And a few buds. One beautiful survivor is the small lavender-color ground cover Veronica Waterperry. The incomplete but careful hand clearing I did around and among it helped. Time to do it again this year, and really dig out the returning blackberries...

The Pacific coast iris hybrids are blooming in the yard

Some of my favorite flowers are blooming here now.

The little wild white irises and yellow Calochortus down the hill along the trail, apple trees in the orchard, dogwoods all around town, and here in the yard, many colors of hybrids of the Pacific coast irises, along with hardy Geraniums and Veronica Waterperry.

The English bluebells (Scilla) are just finishing, the last of the flowering lawn bulbs, and the rest of the spring garden bulbs are done here.

This textured picture of an iris should make fun fabric, especially in a mirrored layout, where, when the grasses meet at the edges of the image they make interesting bug-like designs.

There's no such thing as "normal" weather here...

More than 20 years ago, shortly after moving here to my grandfather's house, I heard from a local orchard owner, in a gardening class "More years than not, we have spring here in January & February, and winter in March and April." And more years than not, in the years since, that has been true. This year is the exception that points up the truth of the rule.

It is snowing. Again. Twice last week I walked home from work (early) at night in the snow because the buses had stopped running. Others who depended on cars had had to leave lots earlier, or not get home, because it required chains to go downhill from here (2500ft). This is my only day off this weekend. It was not supposed to snow today, just rain. It is supposed to snow tomorrow.

That's the other rule I learned during my years of working outdoors here: "If they say it will snow at this elevation, usually it won't. If they say it won't, often it will." That's been true both ways several times in the last 2 weeks.

But the "no such thing as normal weather" you ask? Well, you might think of "average" weather as normal. But here, average is made up of an El Niño year, and a La Niña year, and several drought years. There is no year in which we have weather equal to the average of all those.

In a drought year, we have lots of beautiful days in January & February, gardening weather. (We can't dig in our red clay soil when it's too wet, unless we want red clay bricks.) This year, we did have a couple of chilly sunny weeks before the snow started.

The year I moved here, it was too wet to garden every day off I had from mid-February though May (El Niño). The year my sister died in March, after I got back here, all of April was cold, snowy, hailing, not just the first few weeks. The apple trees didn't bloom until May, a month late.

No such thing as normal weather. But I miss my favorite days of the year, gardening weather in January & February.

This picture has been Photoshopped, but only to bring out what the eye can see that the camera doesn't; the brilliance of the Geranium blooming on the windowsill against the snow outside; the texture of the screen, pixellating the image; and the color of the trees in the snowy landscape.