Iris Photos, Plus Trying Butterfly Garden Seed Mats

We have several different varieties of iris blooming now in the garden. Although I shared some photos already for the purple theme in the Life in Color photo challenge — excuse me, Life in Colour photo challenge. (I should use the British spelling since our host, Jude, is British, and that’s the way she spells it.) This post shows one more variety and close-ups of the irises wet from the rain. I really like how these turned out.

I took these photos yesterday and later helped Dad with some planting using butterfly garden seed mats. This is our first time planting with this method, so I will have to post an update when we see what results we have. The seed mats came in packages like in the photo below. We ordered them online but no longer remember from where. Sorry.

According to the package, the seed mixture is 34% crimson clover, 28% zinnia, 28% cornflower, 6% catchfly, 3% gloriosa daisy and 1% plains coreopsis.

First, we broke up the soil a bit with a cultivator …

and removed a few weeds.

I didn’t want to dig up this violet, but Dad said it needed to go. So, I took a photo of it before saying “Farewell.” Later, Dad took pity and transplanted the now flowerless plant to a pot with soil.

After we raked the soil a bit, we laid out the seed mats and pinned them in the corners with soil staples.

We laid out two of these along our picket fence, covered the mats with top soil and watered them.

And now we wait …