One of our group, in a separate correspondence,
asked how things are going in my iris world. The answer is that we have
had a record cold winter here, with two 2-foot snow falls. The first
brought two of my neighbor's 45-50-ft tall Leland cypresses down on my house
and iris beds. The second brought down five more. (You can see
some of the remaining trees standing behind my house in the second
photo.) While the worst damage to the house appears to be a broken
window and some eaves knocked loose, a tool shed also collapsed, along with a
broken fence, a semi-destroyed pretty dogwood, and the extent of damage
to individual plants as yet unknown. Oil lamps, candelabras
and the fireplace saved the day when power went out. (Remember that when
you hear the greenies inveigh against fireplaces.) A young neighbor went
up on the roof and removed the heavy snow from my chimney cap, so the flu
would operate. My son and a daughter each live about an hour's drive
away (when the roads are clear). It took Nate 3 days, working with a
snow blower, to clear his long driveway. Laura and her husband, at
the end of a tiny side street, were marooned in their home for 8
days. On the morning of the eighth, her drive finally having been
cleared the evening before, Laura headed for work, only to find that a snow
plow had buried the entrance to their street.
As for the irises as a whole, the long
deprivation of sunlight and prolonged freezing temperatures has had a
significant retarding effect. In an ordinary year, I would by now have
the plants groomed, fed and sprayed, and be looking forward to the MDBs
popping out in a couple of weeks. This year, the plants as yet show no
sign of new growth, hence are not yet able to be groomed.
To give you an idea of
how abnormal things are, I've attached, besides a couple of
snow-buried beds and downed-trees shots, a photo of markers sunk into the
soil to their labels by the weight of the (finally melted) snow. These
are 15" rose markers, which usually stand 9 or 10 inches tall. In an
ordinary freeze-thaw-freeze-thaw winter here, the problem would be
markers out of the ground and toppled over, but this time, it's the
reverse. So, it's going to be an interesting spring. --
Griff
