A Sea of Blue

Last year we thought the Dwarf Crested Iris did very well in the shade garden. This patch was 10 ft x 10 ft and native when I moved in years ago. In 2008 the new septic field was put in and the irises were left to fend for themselves. Here is last years blooming photo of about half of them.

Now today's photo, many many more blooms. My guess would be 600-700 blooms! Certainly the largest patch of them I have ever seen. What do we do to them? Nothing they are wild, never watered or fertilized.

You can see why my estimate is 600-700 blooms, this is a square foot of them.

 Dr Ruppel clematis is doing better than ever, we have 5 blooms right now.

 Our first Fava Bean blooms, these plants are new to me. The Sugar Snap Peas are a good 2 foot tall, no blooms yet. Meg planted some at school a week or two before ours and she has tons of flowers right now.

Never showed you the bamboo border I did this winter. Here are 20 new daffodil bulbs. The ones on the left are Sir Winston Churchill. The woods behind the daffodils is the main hellebore garden. On Sunday I dug out a new bed and planted 5 of the new double hellebores and several of our own babies.

Here is my current job that I'd doing, another screened in porch. Today I spent all day on a ladder tearing off the little roof over the stairs and building a new roof. The new porch roof will link into the little roof. If I'm lucky I'll have it ready for my roofing guy by Monday. This photo was taken on Monday.

Oh notice the underside of the deck on the left swing mounts(the swings I brought home already), where should they go in our garden?

This is the deck three weeks ago before I started on it. The stairs were scary, very steep (8 1/4 inch rise and 10 inch treads). I have salvaged most of the decking boards and most of the lower deck which was made for kids.