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Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day: May 2024

It’s been a while since I participated in Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. This month feels right for a return to the routine, mainly because I’m in the right head space: motivated to plant and weed, motivated to write and photograph, and ready to give myself permission to be OK with wabi-sabi-style plantings.

May has been filled with more and more bearded irises over the years — mostly because deer don’t eat them the way they do lilies. The alliums are also super deer-resistant, and they offer some long-term interest, but they don’t have quite as much of a punch of color.

I planted bearded iris Califlora War Chief in Fall 2021, and I’m fairly sure this is the first year it’s bloomed. It needs some support, and I’m not sure if it’s because it’s not getting enough sun or if it’s just how this iris behaves.

The two Peggy Sue bearded irises I planted in Fall 2018 have spread nicely over the years, and they now make a colorful impact from a distance. I took this photo a few days ago, and now there’s easily some two dozen blooms.

These purple and lavender irises with yellow throats were already established when we moved into this house some 11 years ago. I’ve divided them once or twice, and I’ve also seen them popping up in places I didn’t remember moving them to.

This little white irises were some more that were already on the property but needed dividing to thrive. I’d honestly forgotten that I’d moved them to a spot by the driveway where they can be enjoyed.

The peonies are putting up buds, but none but the early single-blooming red peonies have shown their colors quite yet.

I also saw this morning that the purple Siberian iris has started to bloom. The foliage looks grassy, so I’ve lost more than one of them over the years to well-meaning landscapers who whack them before they’re in bloom. Glad I still have at least one out there… might need to divide them this fall as a bit of an insurance policy.

This May has also been full of weeds and grass and things that didn’t survive the winter for whatever reason. I think this will be a good summer for my plantings, though, and I’m looking forward to tending to the growing things.

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An Inauspicious Start

Last week, I realized that Early Spring had quite suddenly become Mid-Spring, and that I have a good amount of garden cleanup to tackle. I spontaneously decided to cut down some weed trees along the back fence one morning before work.

The itching started a couple days later.

Wait — there’s not any poison ivy back there… right? The poison ivy lives in the front garden by the dying dogwood tree, and over by the office window, but not along the back fence!

Well, I double-checked. Looks like it does now.

I wasn’t expecting it, so I wasn’t watching for it. I had seen the tiny sprigs and thought it was a volunteer raspberry bush, and cut it back along with the weed trees. Since the branches were small ones, I’d picked them up with the piles of twigs and carried them across the yard to toss in the garbage.

The first itchy spot cropped up on the inside of my left forearm, where I’d pushed up the sleeve of my sweatshirt.

Right then, I should have showered and scrubbed all over with Tecnu. But I didn’t.

And it spread.

I am so sensitive to urushiol.

It’s a week later, and I’m still finding new blisters and itchy spots. Anywhere my soiled fingernails touched: neck, waist, and places that don’t ever see sunshine.

At this point, Benadryl antihistamine pills and Clobetasone prescription steroid cream are pretty much all I need. That and patience.

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Solar Eclipse 2024

Our school district decided to give the kids the day off for the solar eclipse on April 9, trading it for some other previously-scheduled teacher workday. I was glad for that, since the timing of totality in Northwest Ohio would have put the the big event happening near the end of his bus ride home from school.

I work from home, and Aaron works nights, and the path of totality was such that we could get a minute or so of Total Eclipse action right in our back yard, so there was no need for us to fight traffic and crowds.

I didn’t even need to dig out the eclipse glasses I saved from the partial eclipse in 2017, since Connor’s school sent home a few pairs with each student. Funny… that eclipse happened on Connor’s last day of pre-Kindergarten, and the idea of watching the next eclipse with a 12-year-old Connor in 6th grade was just mind-boggling.

But here we are.

The darkness that falls during a solar eclipse is so fascinatingly still. The weird lighting before and after totality reminds me of summer thunderstorms, in a way. Totality, though — seeing the sun’s corona shine through the black of night at 3:15 in the afternoon was amazing. I absolutely understand why some people become eclipse-chasers after experiencing totality in person.

My iPhone 12, of course, wasn’t equipped to photograph the eclipse in any sort of meaningful way… but that didn’t stop me from making the attempt. It’s just my knee-jerk reaction to these kinds of experiences in nature — I want to document it so I remember it forever, even if the documentation is a blurry, blown-out similitude of what I saw with my own eyes.

The solar eclipse was amazing. A+ would watch again.