Iris and other things.

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain"

                                                                                        Vivien Greene

Wow, if that quote isn't appropriate for this Oregon's spring, I don't know what is. Raining cats and dogs these past few days. Back to below average temperatures as well, so cold and wet is the story of the day. 

Iris 'Burgundy'

The dwarf bearded iris collection is going gangbusters in the garden, Still more to come and I'll do right proper followup post on that. But this week we made a visit to sebright gardens and were treated to a royal show of the Lady slipper orchids in full bloom so I thought I would share that here:

I didn't catch all the names, but they had quite a few different varieties

Sebright is one of those nursery/gardens that has interest all year around. 

On the home front the Calochortus collection is just starting in now, the extra cool and wet spring has played some havoc with this grower, We had some false springs and the fertilizer applications were followed by record setting cold and snow, leading to some issues with Ammonium toxicity with the normal CAL/MAG fertilizer I use. Subsequent applications with foliar fish fertilizer seems to have taken care of the issues. I think the Calochortus are confused because they are used to warm sunny weather to get them to open up so they seem to be sitting in suspended animation at the moment. 

Calochortus amabalis 
took advantage of some of the warm weather days in between cold showers to open up. 

I have a graphic design company working on the new website as I write this and hope to have it up and running before too long! The blog will hopefully be integrated into it, but I also might need to make some changes. Stay tuned for more good stuff coming as I work on some long  anticipated nursery expansion plans! 

Rain, rain, rain and more rain, lows into the high 30's even. 

Mark