Cult: spring, spring, glorious spring

Our tall beardeds are now in full bloom, and I have a chance to actually see them, now.

I have several plants of Kathleen Kay Nelson blooming that I bought 6 months ago. Even after so short a time, it's blown me away. Such beautiful wide blooms with such crisp texture and high bud count. Have any of you used it for breeding at all?  It certainly seems to produce a mass of pollen. Yaquina Blue is looking spectaculor as usual, and my other favourite blue Scented Bubbles is nearly finished.
My collection of Kevin Nilsen's stuff is looking good. Very different reds and browns. Hope to have a new slide scanner soon so I can post photos. Our web site is in the planning stage and we're looking at exporting over the next year.

Have some very interesting seedlings. A lovely chocloate ruby one from Epicentre x Binalong (Nilsen) and a bit of a colour break in a soft lavender, very flared with a fine gold edging (as per Brides Halo). It driving me crazy as this is one of the few crosses I have that I've lost the details for. I suspect its from Amazon Bride x something like Aztec Burst by the form and  other seedlings from the cross. The form is so different from the floppiness of Amazon Bride and I just dying to know what else is carrying that fairly rare gene. Could keep me busy for years, playing with this. My Scented Bubbles seedlings are looking nice but many have low increase.

It'a amazing how stunning things can look one year and then just average the next. Old White Lightning looks average this year after last years great looks, but good old Ice Sculpture looks stunning, when it so often looks just big and floppy.

Dodge City is looking amazing this year. Has any one had much rebloom from it?. I'mcertainly playing with it for breeding, it looks so good.

Last weekend was the the most exhilarating and exhausting I've ever had. We had the Internation Rose Festival (Thurs - Sun) and the South Australian Iris Show on the same weekend and we were selling at both.
The Rose Festival was amazing. We had mocked up a rose and iris garden and once the weather inproved on the Friday and we had all our blooms out it looked great. It was interesting to see the responses of so many people who obiously only knew the old flags. "Oh, just look at those colours" was the most common comment. Our biggest problem was supply as we sold out of many varieties each day. Any that looked a bit different, such as Jesse's Song, Spatzel, Ride The Wind just walked out the door. So we were digging and trimming  into the wee small hours and up again at 4am. The best debt reduction program I've ever seen. This meant that I could only take our more unusual stuff to the Iris Show, which was interesting. It was a very good show, as much as I could appreciate through my blurred eyes.

The weather this week is fine but fairly cool so the blooms are looking great, and the surrounding countryside is sparkling. The Adelaide Hills always look so beautiful this time of year. The La, Spurias and Sibs are justing starting to bloom. The Spurias I put in the display garden are loking magnificent. Does anyone else grow the old Spuria Betty Cooper. I'm sure that is going to take over the place one day, it's so enthusiastic and prolific in it's increase. It's great to give people to try,  if they have any doubts about their ability to grow Spurias. You couldn't kill it with an axe.

Our only problem this year has been a reasonable amount of fungal spot as we've had cold wet periods followed by very warm humid ones, but we've had very little soft rot which many people on the Adelaide Plains have been complaining of this year.

It's just getting light and time for my early morning inspection of what popped out overnight. Joy oh Joy its Spring.

Colleen Modra
South Australia Zone 8/9


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