More seedlings (fast internet at the Dr.'s office helps with downloading photos!)






The back field:

Club members drooling on the blooms :

Our hybridizing host, Don Murphy, is in the yellow shirt.

Beautiful irises, and it looks like it was a beautiful day, too! Thanks for sharing these photos, Diana.

Great shots, Diana! Did you breed all those seedlings?

Planted Ink Patterns and the NOID today.

Monty, Don Murphy is the breeder of the seedlings she posted. They did a tour at his place. He's the one in the yellow shirt in her last post.

Only thing I did outside today was to watch the rain and wind from inside the house. Will be stormy off and on thru Sun so no outside work in the gardens this weekend here.

This is the peak of bloom here. Many Iris flowers!
I am going to take photos tomorrow. Presby's Crown Jewel blossomed but it was a here and gone event.
The wind is ferocious here and the blossoms don't seem to last in picture perfect condition more than day or sometime only a few hours.
So beautiful, every one!
Diana, the photos are stunning.
Marilyn, looks like a good year in your area.
Everyone else, Isn't Iris Bloom Season Fun!

I had my first Iris open today although I think a bloom opened a day ago or two. It is a NOID but I was delighted to see that it is new to me. I have never had this color of SDB. My others are not showing any signs of blooms.




I noticed several others are sending up bloom stalks. I am so anxious to see what these all turn out to be.

I got to bring home a couple of irises (in need of homes) from the tour. One is a few fans of the 1927 Historic Iris "Coronation" to naturalize by my mail box. The other is a seedling that didn't get approved for registry, but has an unofficial name - "Purple Horned Orange Rhino".
Here it is opening up indoors in a vase:

Purple Horned Orange Rhino, what a name!

Did they say why it did not make the quota to register?

For a long time space agers weren't accepted. It could be re-introduced now I think it they wanted to.

Makes me wonder how many potential fantastic irises got scrapped years and decades ago because of that.

My garden walk included SDB Snowtree (Sobek), which bloomed today.

BlueRidgeGardener23 said: Purple Horned Orange Rhino, what a name!

Did they say why it did not make the quota to register?

I don't know, but Tom's explanation sounds likely...

https://wiki.irises.org/Main/I... This is an interesting read on the space agers, and a link to Lloyd Austin who worked to develop irises with spoons and flounces and get them accepted into the AIS He died in 1963, so it must have been some time before that that they were allowed to be registered.

Very interesting read. We have Mr. Austin to thank for many wonderful space agers that he created and would be introduced long after his time.

Thorn Bird does very well here. And this is the today's photo

SDB Glebe Brook (J Burton II).
Hope to go out to weed this afternoon.

That may be the truest blue iris I have seen.

I did some work on 2 raised Iris beds and have them almost ready for more Iris to be added. I also cleaned up dead leaves and weeds in 2 other Iris raised beds. We are to get rain overnight into tomorrow so that is about all for this weekend.

Deadheaded, cut spent stalks, and made new labels. Our last rain was two weeks ago and the wind has been very strong the last couple of days, which is drying out the blooms. My stalks are very tall this year for some reason and a lot of them have been knocked over by the strong winds.