CAT: Great day for a Superstition Visit

This being Earth Day, Joanne and I decided to take the day and drive into the
glorious California foothills. The sky was clear, and blue, the rolling
foothills were green with spring grass, and painted with patches of yellow and
orange poppies, blue lupin, red clover and a myriad of other colors and plants
I am not able to identify.

That is, of course, until we arrived at one of the most glorius garden spots
in the Mariposa foothills - Superstition Iris Gardens - filled with things
that belong to a genus I am a little familiar with. The fields were a riot of
color with Arilbreds, SDBs, MTBs, IBs, BBs and early TBs in bloom. Your eye
just cannot take it all in as you wend your way up the driveway past the
seedling beds to the main gardens, there to be met by two very fine
irisarians, and wonderful, pleasant hosts, Rick Tasco and Roger Duncan.

Wraith was with us, and since we wouldn't want him to accidently do any damage
to an iris, I found a nice shady tree for him to sit under while we toured the
gardens. He was mostly pleasant about not being able to wander in the garden
as he does at home, but definitely let us know that he felt very put out.

They have over 1200 varieties growing in the garden and as you might imagine
it takes quite a while to walk through. We timed it just right for the ABs
which is what I wanted most to look at this time, but about 30% of the TBs
were also open. We saw some wonderful clumps of Ricks '97 and '98 intros
(MARIPOSA SKIES '97, GLACIER POINT '98, and SPLASHACATA '98).

BUT the high light of the day was a tour of Rick's seedling bed and a preview
of SA crosses off of the ever notorius <BIG GRIN HERE>........THORNBIRD. Oh
lordy, some of the things we saw.... I know some of you will not believe this,
but I may just have to by some of them....

Of course, we had to have some of the normal type of excitement for the day.
About midway through the tour of the seedlings, we hear a shout from Roger at
the other end of the field. There is Wraith trotting along the edge of the
field trying to figure out how to get throught the fence. I guess he was
unhappy about being out of sight of all the fun and remembered that one day as
a puppy he discovered he could chew through a leash. Well about one and a half
bites is all it took, once he remembered, to chew through the (almost new) 30
foot lead I had used to affix him to the tree. Roger was very relieved that
Wraith did not try to eat him as he ran by, and I was relieved that he did no
damage other the lead. Next time it is a chain for him!

Superstition is a great place run by great folks. We had a great time. Just as
we were leaving they had a visit from their county agricultural inspector, who
by the way is a lurker on this list. Sooooo, watch out or the long arm of the
law will reach out and grab those of you who misuse chemicals...


John                     | "There be dragons here"
                         |  Annotation used by ancient cartographers
                         |  to indicate the edge of the known world.

John Jones, jijones@ix.netcom.com
Fremont, California, USA, Earth, USDA zone 8/9 (coastal, bay) 
Max high 95F/35C, Min Low 28F/-2C average 10 days each
Heavy clay base for my raised beds.
There are currently 83 Iris pictures on my Website. Visit me at:
http://members.home.net/jijones
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