iris photos – Susan Joy Clark

Iris, #Flower of the Day, #Haiku, #Poetry Prompt #Challenge 357

Some new varieties of iris opened up in the garden today. This is in answer to Cee’s Flower of the Day Challenge and Jude’s Life in Colour purple challenge. I’m pretty sure Jude will find these purple enough?

I had a struggle with my phone camera in the bright sunlight once more. The screen blacks out so much that I could barely see what I was framing at times or I would give it a little too much zoom and not know it until after I snapped the photo and viewed it inside. But a little persistence paid off.

I think this is almost a maroon, but it’s somewhere on the spectrum.

How many challenges can I meet with one post? Here’s another, a haiku for Ronovan Writes Haiku Challenge #357.

while his neighbor curls

up in the sun, he stretches

long, unfurls, revives

The challenge here was to write a haiku using synonyms of “high” and “refresh.”

Both irises really do have a curled up yellow neighbor which I would have photographed if he was not in such a state. Perhaps, I will have another photo opportunity.

Earlier, I wrote a tanka inspired by my irises. I wondered if that was too many poems on a single theme. Then again, Van Gogh painted irises at least four different times. Here is one of my favorites.

By Vincent van Gogh – Unknown source, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=763619

Creative Life, Gardening

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 challen ge. (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 …