My friends over at Maple Leaf Mommy and Mom vs. the Boys have a new and fun meme that I’m going to try to take part in.
The goal of ABC Friday is to photo share with a challenge! Each week is a new letter theme, starting with A of course, we will work our way through the alphabet. I’m coming on board with the letter H. I may go back and add the other letters later on.
Just post a picture with the letter theme for that week…. A is for Auto, B is for Beach, C is for Cake….get the idea?
This is not Wordless Wednesday, feel free to share in words what the photo is all about! or not, it’s up to you!
If you want to take part in ABC Friday they ask you to link back to the host page in your post so that your readers can easily find them! Make sure to link up your post, not your homepage!
I is for….. Iris
This is a bearded iris growing in the flower bed that stretches across the front of my house. With it’s stellar beauty, I planted it in the very center of the bed in order to be the focal point that it deserves. Every year, this beautiful iris grows bigger, stronger, and more beautiful than the year before.
I was never interested in gardening until I retired. Then, suddenly, it became something of a magnet that drew me to it more and more and now I find that is slightly addicting. Since I live in south central Missouri, we have a later planting window than my friends in the deep south, where I grew up. I’m hearing how everything is coming into bloom and it makes me want to go and play in the dirt even more! However, I know how tricky our weather can be here in the Midwest and I know that I must wait a few more weeks or face very disappointing results and a loss of a different kind of green. That loss of green would come from my pocketbook.
I’ve learned lots about gardening since I started out a few years ago. One is to look for last year’s mulch at this time of year. It’s typically marked down VERY cheaply and it helps to put my mulch out before my perennials start to pop up. It gives them more stability and keeps me from having to be as careful when I mulch after they bloom up. I look for markdowns every where for my gardening. I have multiple large flower beds, a couple of vegetable beds, and several flower pots. One of my frugal tips for filling all of them is to shop those markdown racks. Yes, even this beautiful iris was a mark-down that I bought from a clearance rack at Lowe’s several years ago. I wasn’t able to enjoy it’s beauty the first year, but that’s the case with most bulbs.
I also enjoy my irises because they remind me of a dear friend whom I worked with for several years. Her first name is Iris, but typically goes by her middle name. So, until late spring, and until I can travel south to visit, I must settle with the pictures of my beautiful irises from years past.
We have irises in our front yard too and I can’t wait or spring to see them!
I have irises in two beds and around two of my three sheds. I also have hyacinths, lilies, and naked ladies in the bed where this pic was taken.
oh that really is a beauty! Iris is one of my favs but I’ve never been able to grow them. I planted bulbs a couple of years but I think the squirrels got them first lol
If your squirrels got to them first, I’m afraid that you might not have buried them deep enough. 😉 Most of mine were here when I bought my house, but I added the bearded iris when I found it. It’s too pretty not to have it at a discount price.
So pretty, I am not much of a gardener, but my mom loves it
I was never a gardener until I retired. I think it’s something that comes with age. All of my friends thought I’d lost my marbles when I started cutting my own grass and digging in the dirt. I had never done either before!
I absolutely love your iris, its colour is breathtaking!