Last Hurrah - Final Blooms for the Season

Unknown Pale Rosy Peach - bought as an unknown - bloom began 5/17 - I love the color - has been slow to increase but I eagerly watch for it each year!

Rosy Wings - bloom began 5/9 - fabulous increase with lots of blooms will keep this in my garden - terrible photo of the last day of the final bloom of this highly recommended historic!

Summer Wine - bloom began 5/11 - lots of flowers - very good increase - tends to flop, so only recommended if you can corral it somehow! Flowers are a bit more purple and a bit less pink than my photo shows.

Rose Princess - bloom began 5/13 in one of my gardens and 5/20 in this one - a friend says this cultivar is her favorite and she always looks for it when she visits me!

Magnificent Iris, sjsg. Lovely historics. Looks like you didn't suffer from the terrible weather that Kansas City suffered from. Either that or you live in a protected place.

After cleaning out my 12 large flower beds earlier in the spring, I covered them on two different occasions with at least 30 inches of leaves. I collected more than 40 bags of leaves by driving around nearby neighborhoods last fall under cover of darkness. I have a smallish car and went out on a number of forays. I styled myself as a leaf rustler. The bags sat out back all winter in case I needed them in the spring. The second time I covered the gardens, the wind was blowing all afternoon with gusts of 30-40 mph and the temperature slowly and steadily dropping.

That time I bought a number of rolls of deer netting and pins and pinned the leaves inside the netting around all of the plants. I only lost buds (to freezing temps) in 4 of my clumps. All of the rest of my iris buds survived. That night the low was 22. The next couple of nights were also well below freezing. Prior to that we had experienced highs in the mid 70's to low 80's and at least a quarter of my iris plants had fat buds high in the leaves ready to bloom in the next week or so. None of my garden plants were ready for temps well below freezing. My DH helped me with the leaves and netting project for 4 hours and then my DSonIL helped me for another 4 hours. We finished after dark and used all of the bags of leaves plus some pine needles we raked up from under all of our pine trees and the driveway. I think I left the leaves on the beds for about a week.

By now almost all of those leaves have been shredded and have been incorporated into our compost pile out back. The gardens still need to be cleaned out by hand, and the leaf spot is quite a problem, and the weeds are going great guns, but I was diagnosed with uterine cancer in early March and had a complete hysterectomy toward the end of April. I am still recovering from surgery and am currently weighing the pros and cons of chemotherapy and/or radiation and/or brachytherapy, so I have been unable to do any gardening since April and may continue to be unable to do any gardening until October. We'll see. I am the only real hands-on, down-on-my-knees gardener at our house, so this year will be a good opportunity to see which of the irises and daylilies are truly the most hardy!

A good round of pictures & comments, thank you. Best wishes in solving your medical problems & may your garden be a comfort.

Janet's Purple - named for the friend who gave them to me - bloom began 5/11 - they smell like powdered grape drink - I have clumps growing in several spots.

Melissa's White - named for the friend who gave them to me - I have hundreds of these tall ones in almost all of my gardens - bloom began at the end of April and only a handful of buds still remain.

Barry's Yellow #11 - one of my DBIL's unregistered hybrids - bloom began 5/17

Beautiful pictures, and I love the commentaries

Isabel's Iris - named for the friend who gave them to me

The iris season is ending here and as time moves on, behind Isabel's Iris you can see the daylily scapes with buds at their tips. I can't remember whether these are h. Fulva or h. Kwanso. I keep them away from the beds with my named cultivars.

Corky has been blooming for about a week.

Peony bloom is at an end. These are my last flowers for the year.

Stella de Oro started to bloom a few days ago.

Yarrow is starting to bloom.

And weeds like clover are trying to take over my gardens!

sjsg,
You have done an amazing job! I am delighted to hear I am not the only leaf napper around. Here we get mostly pine needles, but sometimes regular leaves. One way or the other they are a great help in the garden and compost pile.
I have the greatest sympathy for your cancer problem. I was diagnosed with breast cancer a couple of years ago. They believed they had caught it all, bu wanted me to have radiation as well. I had it. It was not the most fun thing I have ever done, but it was also not the worst either. It is nothing to be afraid of. I didn't have chemotherapy and can't advise you about that, but if it were me I would do anything they told me to do.
One way or the other your iris pictures are wonderful and it was great to see the laundry on the clothes line. How often do we see that these days? I don't even own a clothes line.and do miss freshly sun dried clothes.
Hang in there. Cancer isn't fun, but there is life after cancer as well. In the end, most of us over a certain age live with the continual threat of cancer. The best thing you can do is to follow doctors' order, eat healthy, and enjoy your life.