Hello from northern Minnesota!

Hello Everyone,

My name is Laurie, and I've lived here on my small farm in northern MN since 1978. I was born and raised in the Chicago suburbs but never felt much like a suburban girl. My heart always belonged to the country, and that's where I've ended up.

Our family is comprised of 2 humans, 5 canines, 9 felines, 4 equines, and 2 goldfish. Of course that's not including all of our wildlife neighbors who wander in and out at will and in abundance. Our farm is surrounded by state and federal forest which is home to a huge deer population, as well as black bear, coyote, timberwolf, skunk, porcupine, raccoon, and innumerable other furry, feathered, shelled, and scaled residents.

Although I am essentially a lazy gardener, I do have a passion for irises. I grow hundreds of bearded, beardless, and crested irises in my garden, along with various other perennials that somehow manage to tough it out in this deadly climate with very little help from me. I don't veggie garden because I doubt I could bring anything to ripeness between the deer and our Cocker mix, Raggie.

That's me in a nutshell. If you'd like to read more about me and our family, I invite you to visit my website at:
http://www.geocities.com/lfandjg/

It's good to meet you all. I look forward to hanging around and tossing in my 2 cents worth from time to time here at Dave's Garden.

Laurie

Oh my gosh, your iris are gorgeous. Haven't had time to look at everything, but your site is awesome. Hope you enjoy Daves Garden and much luck with everything you do. Sounds like a great place to live and garden. Now, I'm heading back to your site to explore a little more.

Shirley

Wow! Wow! WOW! Incredible website, incredible flowers! Road trip anyone? Welcome to DAve's!

laurie - welcome from a new york state gardner. glad to have you aboard.

Welcome from Georgia!
Brenda

Welcome, Laurie! Enjoy DG.

welcome from michigan-great pics
i luv iris n DAYlilies

laurief wow, what a web page. welcome to the garden.

Thanks, Folks, for your warm welcome. I'm glad you've enjoyed my website. It's a work in progress. I added just over 200 new iris cultivars to my beds this year, so I'm very eager to see how many of them survive their first northern winter. I'm always particularly excited whenever a new one blooms for the first time. I love to photograph every iris that opens. With any luck, I'll have lots more iris photos to post to my website and here at DG in another 6 mos.

Happy winter, Everyone!

Laurie

Welcome! I think we have just met the lady who never sleeps. How do you keep up with it all?

LOL, Mary! Well, the 4-leggeds are always top priority around here, so any time I have between feeding, cleaning up after, and tending to every whim and need of our (mostly geriatric) crew is divided between everything else I might want or need to do, including working in the iris beds. I'd like to say that's why so many of my iris pics include "native companion plants" (aka weeds). Truth be told, those weeds would probably be there even if I had tons of extra time in which to remove them. Hey, there has to be some advantage to living in a climate with nine months of winter. At least I don't have to feel guilty about being such a negligent gardener for more than a few short months at a time. ;-)

Laurie

Welcom Laurie! Hubby grew up in your neck of the woods. Chicago, his sister still lives up there.

I hope you enjoy DG.

Steph

Welcome to Daves Garden from central Iowa! I'm ready to join kooger in a road trip! What a great site!

A big welcome from frozen Michigan, heard you folks got 50 below last night.

And another warm Iowa Welcome from Iowaron to you Laurief. You will spend more time here than you ever dreamed! (and love every minute :-)
Iowaron

Are you keeping shoveled out and keeping your feet warm? That seems to be the two main things with winter. Visit us over on the farm forum, you'll fit right in.

Thanks again, everybody, for the welcome. Things have been a smite bit nippy up here lately. -20 just now when I was out cleaning the barn and feeding the horses. This is the sort of weather that makes me pull out the insulated bibs. I don't bother with them unless it drops below zero. Otherwise, I just don my coat, hat, gloves, and knee-high Sorels for barn chores (not including all the layers I wear around the house at this time of year). The Sorels keep my feet nice and toasty. The only real problem I have in severely cold temps is with my hands. I could keep them warm enough with choppers, but I can't do chores in choppers, so my fingers sometimes freeze up in insulated work gloves. It is amazing, though, how the extra 20 lbs of body fat I've put on over the last decade have helped keep me warm in frigid weather! ;-)

This is the first winter in years that we've had enough snowfall to have to break out the shovels. With any luck at all, there's enough snow depth now to protect the plants from these temps (-50s wind chills last week, -30s ambient air temps). Over the last two winters when we had almost no snow cover, gardens were devastated all over the Northland. I lost hundreds of plants in my own garden. It's always interesting to see what survives when spring finally arrives.

Well, time to fill buckets with hot water and carry them out to the horses. Silly spoiled beasts won't drink cold water in the winter, and I'd rather carry hot water out to them than spend an hour or two walking a horse around in circles in the frigid cold trying to ease an impaction colic.

Later,

Laurie

It really does pay to baby those horses, they have the worst digestive system! A vet described it to me as a "plumbers nightmare" and after I studied a diagram in a book, I agreed. I've been out there in frigid temperatures and wind in the dark walking a horse with a bellyache, thankfully that one was ok after a couple of hours and I was able to take my chilled to the bone self inside to get warm. We lost one of our older mares a couple of years ago from colic in the winter, we don't know what went wrong but it was a horrible experience I sure don't want to have happen again. On a lighter note, I'm still giggling over your native companion plants (aka weeds). They sure are survivors and way more adapted to our local areas than what we try to grow. I hope your plants have enough snow cover to survive this winter. Mine sure do!

MaryE,

Actually, the horse's digestive system is perfectly designed for its intended purpose - slow, casual grazing on laxative green grass while the horse's body is in near constant motion walking from spot to spot for hours on end. It's when we humans toss huge meals of constipating dry grains, dry pellets, and dry hay at sedentary, confined horses followed by hours of fasting between meals that digestive problems arise. It's no wonder horses colic so frequently under our completely unnatural care. So, we do what we can to stave off the almost inevitable digestive upsets, but we are sadly not always successful. I'm sorry you lost your older mare. I lost an old gelding to colic a number of years ago.

And now I'm waiting for my geriatric herd to finish up breakfast so I can kick 'em out to pasture for a few hours till it's time to bring them in for dinner.

Laurie

Hi, Laura
From the beautiful state of Kentucky. We love horses too.
Presently I do not have one, only one Sheltie, two cats and a beta fish. I live out in the hill and hollows and love it. I do try to veggie garden and have a time with the deer.
See you around on the iris forum.
Teresa

Welcome from Arizona. I love Iris and hope to start having a big bed of them someday. Jo