The first bearded iris is in bloom!
I divided these and moved them to this spot a couple years ago, and they love it here. I’d never seen them bloom before I moved them, and we’d lived in this house for at least five years at that point.
I planted Peggy Sue in the Autumn of 2018. She’s supposed to be a rebloomer, but I don’t recall seeing her rebloom last Fall.
On years with an early spring, the tree peony is done blooming by Memorial Day; when spring is later, she’s in full bloom for the long weekend.
I appreciate the dimension of height that these alliums lend to their surroundings.
I spent a good two hours outside this afternoon, tidying up the peony border and transplanting some of the raspberry runners that had escaped from the neighbors’ garden and made themselves at home amongst the peonies.
I also diverged a little from my agenda and started hacking back the overgrown forsythia that’s right next to the peonies. Forsythia are supposed to have a vase-shape, kind of cascading outward from the base. Mine looks like more of a… shapeless mess? So, I started at the perimeter and eliminated as many volunteers as I could — they root wherever the branches touch the ground.
Under the thick overgrowth of forsythia canes and runners, I found a small peony that I never knew was there! Poor guy has been in thick shade for years; I’ll need to remember to move him somewhere more appropriate this fall.
I also enlisted my husband to pull the poison ivy I found at the other end of the peony border, under the evergreen and the Japanese maple. (He’s not allergic to poison ivy, as far as he knows. We’ll find out soon if that’s still true.)
While I was gardening in the front yard, my husband and my son played water guns in the back yard. What a perfect start to summer.