We’ve been watch the Ken Burns documentary Mark Twain. Samuel Clemens’ ability to write about nearly anything, and with style, is inspiring at a time in history when most writing is insipid at best. His evocative prose reminds me of chattering blackbirds in the early Spring. Every word tells a story, separate from the sentence it lives in. His ability to find humor in serious things, was exceeded only by his ability to see details in every aspect of life. Watching historians and writers extol his merits while detailing his failings, as though they were unrelated… makes me doubly curious about the man. Nevertheless, he lived and wrote voraciously.

When I was in my teens, I imagined that writing would always be easy. Up until college, I wrote nearly every evening. Mostly poetry, some prose… but it was a steady stream of ideas. In college, writing for academic pursuits stopped the flow of creative juices for a long while. Eventually clay dried up the writing nearly completely. Making pots took every bit of physical and emotional energy, leaving nothing to write. Listening to Clemens’ ability to write about absolutely anything and everything made me wonder. Was it ever ‘work’ for him? Did he struggle? Or was writing like breathing? Or was it his way of dealing with his demons? For all of the opinions of the various historians and writers in the documentary, their focus on the history of Clemens seems to gloss over any internal obstacles to his writing.

Twenty years ago (maybe more than that), we planted our first bulbs in the garden. Daffodils, a few tulips, a handful of anemone blanda, and quite a few crocuses. Over time, squirrels and chipmunks have scattered the bulbs far from where we originally intended them. This is the time of year when I take stock of what winter has taken a bite out of. There’s always a certain amount of rodent damage, some winter kill, a few plants here and there that were borderline hardy that have shuffled off this mortal coil. Death and dismemberment in the garden is normal. I grieve when I have to remove a dead or dying plant from the garden. I grieve when I find parts of a critter that was someone’s breakfast. Fur and fluff are a reminder that if you make a garden that welcomes wildlife, the critters will live and die in front of you.

I tend to carry my pruners in my pocket daily. Not just to prune shrubs into a more desirable shape. Sometimes it is an ultimatum: grow with abandon, or else! Chaos gardening tends towards neglect which makes my skin itch. I hate ticks. Ticks are very common in these parts. I’ve been watching the robins rummaging through the woodchips for meals. It isn’t always a worm that entices them. I started reading about the effect birds might have on the tick population. I was surprised to hear that they can have a significant impact, especially on the smaller nymph stages of ticks. Hmmm.

The rabbits tend to prune the shrubs I wish would grow. They skip over the things I wish would stay small and manageable. Figures. Today the loppers came out to play with the physocarpus (ninebark) that has needed attention for the last year or so. Most gardeners will ignore a shrub like ninebark because they allow for neglect. I’ve seen over the last few years that substantial pruning can keep the shrub looking bright and vibrant, while opening up the center to more air and less fungal issues. Yay for pruning.

Those pruners also get a workout this time of year trimming down the dead stuff that I didn’t prune back nearly far enough in the fall. Not sure why I am always so tentative when pruning in the autumn. I am sure it leaves the best habitat for bugs and such. Yay for bugs, right?

Today, I watched a carpenter bee hopping from one Chionodoxa to the next, pulling the flower from vertical almost down to touch the ground under the weight of the bee. It didn’t deter the bee one bit! It was absurdly comical, but the bee was very serious about its intent.

Spring used to be cool and wet. A decade or more ago, we saw Spring turn off the spigot, earlier and earlier each year. If it had been a dry winter, Spring was going to be worse. I don’t understand how climate change isn’t painfully obvious to anyone who ever goes outside. It wasn’t like this before…and it won’t be like this again. Last week we had a dusting of snow. Today the temperature was 78°F. That is absurd. This coming weekend is forecast to have multiple nights of hard freezes ahead.

Then there’s the bad news. The closing bit. The thing I have been avoiding writing about since I started typing tonight. I learned today that Hampshire College, my alma mater, is closing. Between debt and low enrollment, the college is unable to survive and will close at the end of the Fall 2026 semester. Not long ago, fellow alumns rallied to save the college, during the first big wave of dire news. It wasn’t enough. The news is hitting all the major outlets, with comparisons to other small colleges that have closed or will be closing soon. The problem is that there is no other college like Hampshire. Eventually, when the shock wears off, and the emotions aren’t so raw, I’ll try to write about why. For now, I’ll grieve.

The 28 chromosome Siberian irises are popping up too. I’ll share some photos of those later this week. A couple of those are tetraploid seedlings, which is interesting to watch. So much to be excited about!

I had planted a few dozen seedlings of baptisia australis when I started the baptisia seed from Hayefield. Those baptisia species had beautiful blue/purple shoots in the early spring of 2025. By October of last year, these new baptisia were ready to be transplanted to their “final” home. We ended up with over thirty seedlings to transplant. Their roots were in excess of a foot in every direction, knotting one seedling to the one beside it.

We started growing baptisia in 2020, after finding someone selling baptisia australis in gallon pots in Danby. As a Father’s Day gift, the family took me down the hill and up South Hill to a tiny nursery. I had no idea that day would lead me down the slippery slope of baptisia. I had only seen them in a few gardens, with the Arboretum at Cornell University being one the of the best examples.

Once I saw how quickly the baptisia adapted to our garden, I immediately wanted more. The newer hybrids from Proven Winners stood out because of the enormous array of colors and the fact that they were in every single nursery, no matter where you went. Good or bad, they were the only option. Big box store, or Amish nursery… they all get their plants from the same wholesalers.

Like most folks during Covid, I took to the internet to try to find seeds (in hopes of saving some money). While baptisia australis seed is fairly common online, hybrids are uncommon to say the least.

I finally stumbled upon Hayefield Seeds. Nancy Ondra’s blog has become a soothing balm of garden knowledge (without the moralistic crunchier-than-thou-bullshit that predominates the contemporary garden writing). She seems to have grown every single plant known… and she writes with a calm that is a welcome change. Probably one of the best gardening blogs anywhere.

I ordered one packet of hybrid baptisia seeds from Hayefield… 20 seeds. I didnt expect half of them to germinate. I didnt expect half of those to survive their first winter. It even says on her website: Germination Information: I recommend these seeds for experienced seed-starters only, because they require some patience. It may take several months to see germination, and the plants may take several years to produce their first flowers.

Meanwhile I was saving seeds whenever I came across the black pods on baptisia in July or August. So I germinated a handful of those seeds too. I wanted LOTS of baptisia.

Fast forward two years and those seeds not only germinated, but they have grown, and grown and grown! I started moving them in October of 2025. I thought I had moved them all. I found out yesterday that I missed quite a few. Nearly twenty were found and transplanted yesterday.

I was unprepared for how difficult it can be to transplant baptisia. Even at this stage, 2-3 years old… their roots are incredible! Long and twisting, running under the paths between beds! Any other plant would pop right up with a quick lift on the digging fork. Not so with baptisia. It is more of a negotiation. A reminder that you can stop, give up, and just leave it there, and the plant wont mind a bit. You’re given the option.

Once the baptisia were out of the ground, I put them all into a plastic trug full of water. Going through the seedlings, one at a time, I found that there was a huge difference in color of shoots on each plant! WOW!

I think it can be safely assumed that the darker purple shoots will likely have dark purple/blue flowers. I am curious to see what varieties of color come from these seedlings. Impatient too… but one thing I have learned from the garden, is that it doesnt care if I am impatient. Things will take the time they take. Some things can’t be rushed.

She looked me straight in the eyes and said, without missing a beat: “That’s dark.”

I haven’t laughed so hard in a long time.

Humor is where we find it.

Sometimes it is under the couch with the cat toys and dust bunnies.

Occasionally it is outside being carried across the sky by a raven.

Today it is a T-Rex going to an Easter egg hunt with other dinos.

Humor is blood brother to Creativity. Complaints of writer’s block or creative drought? I prescribe high doses of laxatives made from equal parts castor oil and candy sprinkles. If it’s gonna be shit, let there be multi-colored shit!

In the past, I made it through winter without misgivings other than complaining about the temperature. Snow helped break the monotony of mud and grey. Lately, things have shifted in my heart. In the depth of winter, it is painful waiting to hear the croaking of the ravens. Sometimes the skies are silent, which only emphasizes the depth of isolation.

As the garden has grown, I’ve tried to lean in close. To capture the infinitesimal behaviors… the tiniest movements… I almost feel like if I miss it, it’s gone for good. But if I see it, if I laugh with surprise, then I get the inside joke. I am privy to the secret language hiding among the mulch. Then I belong.

I am sure my neighbors walking by, seeing me rooting around in the front garden beds, touching the thumb-sized tips of peony shoots, must think me mad. I am chuckling over and over again as each plant pops up in today’s warm weather. I find myself scratching the wood chips aside, just to see if the tiniest sign of life is hiding. There are so many plants I am holding my breath for!

And then with a roar, the daffodils throw themselves out of the ground so hard they lifted the ferns they were interplanted with, completely out of the ground! Overnight, they jumped from tiny green leaves, barely breaking through the chips to BOOOM! I expect tomorrow’s cold rain will dampen their enthusiasm. Supposedly the rain will end by mid-day, so there’s hope that the sun and warmth will push some of the daffodils into full bloom.

This time of year is full of excitement and anticipation. Fear wrapped with a bow. Breath held, and exasperated too. All I want is to touch every tiny plant that sticks its head out of the soil. I want to run my fingers over the unfurling crumpled leaves of the rhubarb… knowing that the bright red knob will unfurl into a monstrous leaf in a few weeks.

The next question would have to be: Who’s ya momma?

Plants take a while to tell you what you won on the genetic roulette wheel.

Year one: you get to dab pollen and cross your fingers while crossing your irises.

Year two: seeds might germinate, might grow enough to plant out into dirt, might make it into winter. After that all the mights add up to frozen nights, deep in snow. Maybe just maybe…

Year three: Spring arrives and with it either a lovely gift or not.

Like I said, it takes a while.

This year I have some goals. As with most things, I expect the goals to shift in unexpected ways. Does that make them any less expected?

These are (in order of appearance) iris brevicaulis, LA iris ‘Brown Recluse and LA Iris ‘Red Echo’. Both Red Echo and Brown Recluse are predominantly iris fulva. From what I have seen so far, they will happily set pods from almost any cross. My hope is to cross these three with some of the other more advanced hybrids to encourage greater vigor and cold hardiness. I also love the more open forms!

In this case, the hope is to create some new iris pseudatas, using both iris pseudacorus as well as SpecX ‘Gubijin’ as the pod parent, with the two early iris ensatas providing pollen.

I hope to take pollen from iris versicolor and cross that with the pseudacorus (and ‘Gubijin’ as well. We have quite a few versicolor irises to work with.

So what might things look like in five years or so, as a result of some of these potential crosses? Might see some iris pseudatas. Not really sure what the pseudacorus X versicolor will look like.

Here are a few photos of iris pseudata from Shimizu, illustrating the potential possibilities, if everything goes as planned and the stars align.

Today was the first day I was able to get a good look at how things made it through winter. On the more mature plants, I am seeing the start of new growth. Some of last year’s seedlings are starting to push out new green. I expect, if we get this forecast week of rain, and then a few strong warm days, we should see more growth as we move into April.

But… and here’s where it gets interesting… inside this simple unassuming yellow iris (SpecX - not pseudacorus) is something marvelous. An extra chromosome. Instead of 2n=34 like all other pseudacorus, ‘Gubijin’ is walking around with 2n=35. “It is believed to be 3rd or 4th generation from the sterile hybrid 'Holden Clough' by way of 'Roy Davidson'. "I got the seed ( Gubijin) from BIS seed exchanged, Seed donor was Anne B.White."--Shimizu”- again, from the wiki.irises.org site.

First off, how can you have a sterile hybrid ‘Holden Clough’ that then has 3-4 generations of progeny? That’s not sterile. That’s just holding out for better options.

I have spent a silly number of nights trying to deduce where that extra chromosome came from. Then I thought about trying to work backwards… from ‘Gubijin’, back to its parents, and then grandparents… all the way back to ‘Holden Clough’

I dont think anyone would call ‘Holden Clough’ a gorgeous iris. But there’s granddaddy for ya. How did we get from there to ‘Gubijin’? Apparently, by back crossing with more pseudacorus, you end up with a yellow flowered child that acts like a pseudacorus, swims like a pseudacorus, and quacks like a pseudacorus. Except that if you cross it to itself, you get something wild (and purple).

By and large, in iris pseudacorus, you find yellow flowers and very occasionally you get white flowers. That would make yellow the dominant gene for color. Cross it with itself, it should be yellow most of the time… occasionally dropping in a white once in a while… but purple? Hmmm. Where’d that come from?

That made me wonder what other pollen-daubing fools like myself had done with ‘Holden Clough’ in the intervening years since 1971 when it was introduced. Turns out, in 1988 Sarah Tiffney introduced a selfed child of ‘Holden Clough’ called ‘Holden’s Child’. And it sure wasn’t yellow.

All of which is to say, there’s more going on under the yellow petals of ‘Gubijin’ than most iris growers think. My guess is that it is mighty purple! Purple is almost invariably the dominant color is all irises. So how did it get into ‘Holden Clough’?

That is what I want to experiment with this spring.

I want to try to start the process of recreating ‘Holden Clough’, by crossing iris pseudacorus with (insert mystery iris here) and then back crossing to iris pseudacorus for a couple of years (7-9 years according to chromosome calculations) until out should pop a baby ‘Gubijin’.

The big question really is: why bother?

‘Gubijin’ already exists. Use it. Move on to making new hybrids (pseudatas) with it already. Yeah, I could do that. But there’s a mystery to be solved. Well, depending on who you ask, the mystery was already solved. Jean Witt in the Summer 2015 issue of SIGNA (the Species Iris Group of North America) journal wrote a fantastic article: Beating the Odds. Unlike the original guessed parentage of iris pseudata X iris chrysographes or iris foetidissima… Jean Witt deduced that the pollen donor for ‘Holden Clough’ is very likely iris versicolor. The irony is that I had come to that conclusion too, after having read the article by Louise Sawyer, entitled “Crossing I. pseudacorus and I. versicolor”, Botanical Gazette, vol.79 #1, March 1925, pp. 60-72. The most incredible thing about Sawyer’s article was that she was looking to see what kept the pollen from traveling down the pollen tube and fertilizing the ovaries. She crossed in both directions… and her results are eye opening!

Why does any of this matter? Mystery solved, case closed, right?

Well, while for all appearances yes, it does look pretty obvious and straightforward. But genetics isn’t always 1+1=2. Sometimes you get 2.5. My hope is to try to recreate the weird cross that resulted in ‘Holden Clough’ so that I can tease out the answer with greater certainty. Proof, if you will. Empirical data.

The downside is that it takes years.

What do they say about the best time to plant a tree?

Well, it’s not really any different why hybridizing. Get started now because it is going to take years.

In the meantime, what do I want to do with ‘Gubijin’ that’s already growing in our garden? This summer, I hope to cross it with a few different early flowering iris ensatas (Japanese iris). Hiroshi Shimizu explained that he mixes up his pollen collected from multiple enatas, before applying the pollen to ‘Gubijin’.

Usually one wants to know the specific pollen donor (daddy) when hybridizing, but in this case, I think Shimizu’s idea was to create the cross and worry about creating specific crosses later if the new cross was successful. It can be said that his crosses with ‘Gubijin’ led to the new Species Cross designated ‘Pseudata’.

His results have been incredible. Beautiful colors, great growth and seemingly sterile. With the few that I have grown of Shimizu’s I can say that the anthers on all of them are grossly underdeveloped. No pollen being produced. That makes for a pretty darned sterile plant.

What I don’t know yet is whether or not the ovaries are functional. That is another thing I hope to test this year… through a kind of quasi-in-vitro fertilization method called “cut-style pollination”. If the idea works, I’ll probably try to write the procedure into an article along with details and photos, etc. Heck, I might even try it on a few other recalcitrant irises. We shall see.

Easy question right?

Where do you start?

To badly misquote from Men in Black: The best of the best of the best, sir.

That’s certainly a well established tradition. Find the most recent award winners, cross them with other award winners. Statistically speaking, you’ll likely be on the winning path. As an exercise, I went through the last twenty years of Siberian iris Morgan-Wood Award winners, and all of them came from lines of award winning parents. Simple, right?

Imagine my surprise when some of the hybridizers suggested that I simply start with my favorite irises and cross them. Wait? What? Just pick my favorites and start a hybridizing line based on ‘liking them’ ? Hardly seems like a proper way to develop a winning breeding line.

Unsurprisingly, what I have found is that most of the irises that make their way into commerce are award winners. Hah. And most of them share a lot of the same parents if you go back just a few generations. Hah! Well… okay…

Then my thought was: why not go back to some of those older irises and start the line with the originals? It didn’t take much to realize that the time that had passed between when those original/older/historic irises were popular and now, was in many cases more than twenty years (in some cases more like fifty years!). When talking about plant genetics, a year of time can’t really be rushed. You only get one generation of seedlings per year. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I have fifty years left in this body to go back and dig up old genetics to build a “new” line. Sigh.

When I started being interested in Siberian irises, I bought a handful of plants from Ensata.com (now retired and closed). I had no clue. I just thought the plants were pretty. I expect most of us make our first decisions with similar levels of discernment. I had no idea what a diploid iris was, or a tetraploid iris. I didn’t have a clue what it meant that some bloomed early vs late. Everyone said Siberian irises were easy to grow… great iris to start with. Can’t fail! Yeah… well…

I think to myself (quietly) that someone should pay me for all of the “easy” plants that I have sent to early graves. I’d have $ instead of compost. In all seriousness, I think we should have to display a wall of empty flower pots along a wall for all the plants we’ve killed. Nah, that would just be absurd! I’d have run out of wall space long ago.

Three years ago, I was gifted a few seeds from Marty Schafer and Jan Sacks… a couple leftover seeds from their crosses from that year (or maybe the year before). I don’t think anyone could have given me a greater gift. The little paper envelopes had the parents of the cross for the seeds, spelled out in their hybridizing code. I felt like I was holding gold. Because the seeds were from their own hybridized crosses (which at the time had not been introduced), they were un-named. Which also meant I had precious little clue what these seeds might look like as adult plants.

One need only look through the Siberian iris lines that Schafer/Sacks have created to see one of the biggest box of crayons in the iris world. And in my hands, in this little paper envelope were tiny promises of some mysterious color! But the waiting! First the waiting for the seeds to germinate… then to grow enough to plant out… and then they had to make it through winter. I held my breath last spring as the first seedlings sent up their maiden blooms.

It’s one thing when you buy a named variety, and it comes with that lovely little tag that along with all of the growing information and specs we ignore, there is that little photo of the plant in bloom. It is a whole different thing when you plant a seed. You might know pod parent and maybe even know the pollen donor… but the seedling is going to be all new!

When the first seedlings started blooming, I took an absurd number of photographs of them. In hindsight, there are all sorts of notes I should have been recording. Well, shucks. I’ll have to do that this year. But I’ll probably take more photos too. I’ll be curious to see how they behave after being moved late in the season last summer. Sometimes irises sulk after being moved.

Seeing what those seeds produced, I feel like I need to dab pollen from them on every single bloom that opens this year. There’s magic in that color! But wait! I want pollen from that one too!

I have a sneaking suspicion that Marty and Jan knew exactly what they were doing when they sent those little packets of seeds. Pretty sure they knew I’d be calling in sick Fridays during the month of June so I can get out there with my tweezers and toothpicks, crossing pollen from one plant to the next. I bet they knew I’d be asking them a thousand more questions with every passing season. Questions for them and for the hybridizers before them. Questions about which parent to pick…

When we ran our pottery studio, we would save our seconds for our annual ‘seconds sale’, usually held around Mother’s Day. I think the date was chosen as much for it being spring-ish and one of those weekends when the weather usually cooperated, as much as it was about taking mom out to look at pottery (and for kids to be able to afford to buy a gift for mom). That was how it started.

What constituted a ‘second’? Every potter values their work differently… and I pass no judgements on any other potter for how they rate their seconds. For me, a second was a pot that had a failure… a glaze drip that had to be ground off, a plate that rocked or spun, a mug that warped during firing, a bowl where the glaze application was thin in one spot. Sometimes a second was really a new glaze test that just didn’t make the cut. They were structurally, functionally sound, but they were not firsts. I couldn’t in good conscience charge full price.

We would save these seconds in a spot in our gallery, out of sight, but within reach of kids. There was even a sign next to the stash that said: Please Touch! We would tell parents that if your kid can read the sign, they can touch the pots. No scolding kids for being able to read the invitation. I can’t tell you the number of smiles on kids’ faces we saw. We handed out a lot of free pots to kids too. Never an ounce of regret.

We also smashed enough pots to have a deep shard pile. Sometimes things really sucked. Not ashamed to admit failure. There was plenty. If we were pushing things, sometimes the risk went poof. It happens. Sometimes your contractor falls through the ceiling and lands on your shoulder while you’re loading a kiln. And you drop a huge platter onto the rest of the entire stack of pots in the kiln. Yeah, shit happened.

Which leads back to the question: What do you save?

One of my clay heroes was British potter, Mick Casson… and when it came to rating his pots he “divided them into Racers, for the best pieces, followed by Gems, Firsts and Subs.” -http://interpretingceramics.com/issue006/mcasson/articles/mc01.htm

We should all save the best pieces right? But what about when someone says “I’ll give you $100 for that ____”? I don’t know about you, but having enough cash to buy dinner goes a long way. I haven’t met a potter who got rich by making pots. Usually their kitchen is full of their own seconds and pots they traded with other potters at shows and workshops. The number of racers I sold numbers many (more than I should have parted with)… and what I wouldn’t give to have hung on to some of them for just a little longer. The Gems and Firsts absolutely paid the bills. Whether to galleries or sold through our own gallery or at street shows… they were cash in glazed form.

The Racers are still clear as day. It’s been sixteen years since we closed the studio. Those Racers drove the desire to make more and better work. They tickled my brain in those quiet moments when exhaustion and fatigue held off long enough for thoughts to coalesce. The Racers occupied my dreams. They inspired wild crazy glaze fantasies. The next firing… the next firing. It was a mantra. The best pot would always be in the next firing.

Fast forward to this new life of irises and our garden. The question of what to save is relevant again. Hybridizers make a lot of plants. In general, if a seedling is grown for three years and it fails to make the cut, it gets shovel pruned and tossed into the compost. Some might blanch at the idea of killing a plant that by any other measure might be ‘pretty’… it might flower nicely, but maybe after flowering the foliage just flops. Or maybe you have two other seedlings with similar coloration, but better branching, or slightly larger flower form. There’s always something that fails to make the cut.

This year we have about 600-ish seeds planted. Last year we planted 300 or so. The year before was maybe 200. It is wholly impossible to fit 600 new seedlings into the space where 300 seedlings fit the year before. Stuff has to go. Hence the question. What is worth saving? With regard to seedlings, I think being ruthless is the only way to build a strong breeding line and to focus my efforts on exactly the plants I see in my mind. Don’t misunderstand me…I don’t enjoy it. I grieve with each plant that doesn’t make the cut. It tried. Unlike my seconds, which made up less than five percent of our production volume, my expectation is that closer to ninety percent of my iris production will result in culled plants. And that is just the ones that have no future. We’re starting at the bottom here.

If we go back to Mick Casson’s Racers, Gems, Firsts and Subs… that criteria covers what to do with the Subs (substandard). They get composted. No reason to continue that genetic line. Nothing good will come from that. I am trying to think of it as a first draft. I took a lot of pots off their ware boards and recycled them back into clay.

Then come the Firsts. Plants that show promise. Plants that smile at me, catch my eye and maybe they have something special. They get to hang out for a couple of years, grow to a reasonable size, maybe even get divided and tested in other parts of the garden to see how they do in other microclimates. I figured this is their trial period of maybe three years. Rock my world… or you’re going on the cart.

Irises that knock my socks off I think of as Gems. I have already seen in our first seedlings that some irises already know all the words to the song AND they can sing in tune. Others need more practice. To be fair, sometimes seedlings take two or three years to show their potential. But sometimes a dud is just a dud, no matter how much I might wish it otherwise.

What makes a Racer? Today, I don’t know. But I think I will when I see it.

Then it will go through judging and assessing by folks with more experience. If the new plant makes the grade, then it might get shared to other iris growers in other states to see how it behaves outside of our little garden. A few years after that, we might register it and maybe, just maybe, introduce it for sale to the public.

Coming back to the original question of What to Save…

This is just with new stuff. New plants, new irises… what about old irises? That I want to cover another time. That might get muddy.

When the storm clears and the thick clouds pass to the east,

a silence settles.

Even the plow doesn’t want to disturb the quiet blanket covering everything.

The morning rush to desperate jobs is still

sitting idle.

Dawn’s light glances off the snow and retreats.

There’s still time for a little more sleep

under the covers.

And it was a lie.

The poor crocuses got so excited. Even the ones the bunnies had nibbled down to nubbins during this long cold winter, tried their level best to push up a bloom while the sun shone. Lying sack of shit spring.

The inky sky was predatory. The blue-sky long gone and done. Trees tucked their heads down, embarrassed to have been seen dancing. Secret gales puffed up their cheeks, mouths full of spittle. And yeah, it fucking rained. Cold icy rain, with body warm breaths amidst the pellets. What the hell? After the deluge passed, and the winds exhaled, I assumed we’d catch a break. Hah. Someone left the freezer door open. Poor daffodils, with their leaves just breaking through the soil. They were so excited to be invited to the party. Someone gave them the wrong address. Now they are just sitting there wondering where everyone else went. I didn’t have the heart to tell them to tuck tail and run home. The sideways snow was enough of a bully to chase them off the lawn. Wave after wave, the toothless snow covered everything like laundry thrown to the ground, unfolded. Not serious snow that intends to stay through the holidays, unwelome guest. The dry roads knew the difference, with their salty expression of defiance.

When the gurgling pipes started chuggling through the kitchen, I had a feeling that the chill in the air wasn’t just sticking around for the morning. Spring wasn’t sprung, it was a trap for the gullible who put away their heavy coat and fished out their cotton shirts. Hopes traded for a sigh, knowing that this happens. Not every year. But enough to know that I should have known that Spring would pull the football away, like always.

Since Christmas, Nancy has taken to giving Gladys (the T-Rex) something festive to play with. Sort of an anti-Hallmark holiday greeting sort of vibe.

By and large, I try to ignore the most annoying bugs until they cross the line. What line? Well… when they ruin my day. That line.

I wont indiscriminately kill a bug just because we happen to exist in the same space and time. Most of the time, I wont even brush it off when it lands on me.

I draw the line at the iris bud fly. Neorthacheta dissimilis

Until 2025, I had only heard about this iris bud fly in books and from one other iris grower. Usually, when folks brought up terrible bugs and irises in the same sentence, it was generally about iris borer. The bud fly was new to me.

As things would have it, I should have heeded the warning given to us by MJ Urist, when we were digging Louisiana irises in her garden. She advised us to be on the lookout for it. Turns out, this fly is active early in the season, lays its eggs near the tip of what will become a flower bud. The little maggot burrows its way into the flower, eating all the sweet bits along the way. The maggot eats the pollen, then it goes after unopened petals, before burrowing its way down to the ovaries. If left unchecked, it pupates and leaves behind a red brown pupae, oftentimes near the base of the plant. And the cycle repeats, year on year.

How do you know when you have iris bud fly (Neorthacheta dissimilis), well the first indicator is if your early irises start to bloom with deformities.

In trying to determine what to do about this iris bud fly, I read everything I could find. Probably the best article is: Doyon J, Savage J, Bailleul S, Labelle S, Brodeur J. Susceptibility of iris (Iridaceae) to larval infestation by Neorthacheta dissimilis (Diptera: Scathophagidae). The Canadian Entomologist. 2022;154(1):e5. doi:10.4039/tce.2021.53. Followed by: Sacks, J. 2013. A ray of light in the battle of against Neorthocheta dissimilis. Canadian Iris Society Newsletter, 57:10–13 (Jan Sack’s notes about battling with this fly were so helpful!)

The short answer is to apply pesticides that are highly toxic or try trapping the flies using sticky traps. The key take-away was that the flies tend to hit mid-season to late-season irises (mid-May through June). For us, that meant our Siberians were hit very hard, followed by the Louisiana irises and the iris versicolor. Not sure why, but the iris ensata, iris pseudata and the iris laevigata seemed to remain untouched.

This sort of devastation is heartbreaking for any gardener, but for a hybridizer it is catastrophic! Rather than go the route of carcinogenic pesticides, I started looking into traps. I found a barn fly trap that actually catches the flies using a lure. From the start, I realized that the usual lures probably would attract all sorts of flies one might find in a barn. But since these flies were being drawn to irises, I decided to make a lure out of damaged, rotting iris flowers, mixed with some water and a few other things to make an appetizing lure.

Trigger warning for folks who get grossed out by lots of bugs.

There was a little bit of by-catch, but for the most part, the trap caught flies. The real question is to see how the trap behaves this spring. Will it catch enough of the early season flies to deal with them before they decimate the Siberian irises again? What would you do to deal with this sort of an issue?

Today I was thinking about the piles of plastic pots that are scattered around our shed. Three years ago, I would have paid someone just about anything for a few dozen plastic pots. We were out! Every pot was in use. It was transplanting time… and I had to dive through the recycling bin to scavenge yogurt containers to double as flower pots. Sigh. It worked…. but a week later, a friend brought me a garbage-can’s worth of plastic pots. Feast meet famine.

When I started gardening I was a punk kid. I had no idea what things cost. Heck, I don’t think I even knew that you could buy plants. They were just things everyone had in their yard in Miami. My parents bought a house in Miami Springs and we had just moved away from our house in Hialeah. The new house was devoid of almost any sign of life. The grass was threadbare. Stripped of anything green, thanks to dogs and neglect… the yard was closer to a sandy parking strip than to a lawn. My job was to water things and try to get it looking nice before my parents moved in. I was not quite twelve years old.

One of our new neighbors, across the street, had the most lush garden hidden behind her fence. Huge ficus trees with bromeliads and orchids everywhere. She had multiple ferns up in her trees including a staghorn fern that must have been five feet across. I’d never seen the like. Our next-door neighbor had simpler more traditional yard, with hedges and plantings along the foundation. Asparagus fern, mixed in with crotons of all sorts of colors, lined the front of her house. Needless to say, our yard had nothing to speak of. The avocado tree in the backyard was overgrown. The Brazilian Peppertree (Schinus terebinthifolia) was interspersed with Surinam cherry. Both were frighteningly invasive.

Every morning and evening I would be outside, watering the despairing yard, and envying the lush verdant yards of my neighbors. One morning, I caught Marge outside cutting back plants and throwing the debris into a pile (which the city would come and collect). I asked her how she grew such amazing plants. She took a chunk of one of the plants, stripped the lower leaves off the stem, and shoved it into the dirt. Nothing else. She taught me my first lessons in propagation that day. Then she told me to go get all the plants out of the trash pile, and put them in my garden. So I did. A week later, most of them had survived. And our front yard looked a lot less like shit. When my mom and dad moved in, my mom wanted to buy a special shrub (oleander) to frame the entryway. It was one of the only plants I ever saw my mom want to BUY. And it was expensive (for us). Sigh.

Enough, not enough. Too much.

Six years ago, at the onset of Covid, I started winter-sowing along with a gazillion other home gardeners. Suddenly there were no milk jugs in anyone’s recycling! Poof! In desperation, I made do with take-out containers with holes punched in the bottoms and tops. From December to March, I held my breath. They worked… too well. Come April, there were seedlings everywhere. There were more plants than I ever imagined, of every sort… annuals, perennials… all pushing their way out of their containers. Suddenly, there was a glut of plants to get in the ground! Rather than try to pot things up into larger containers (we had no extra pots that year, see above) I decided to try the hunk-o-seed method. I would flip a milk jug over, and out would pop a solid mat of seedlings, with their roots in a tangled mass. Out came the ginsu knife (best garden tool in the world)… and zip zip zip. Four or six chunks of seedlings, ready to plant. No muss, no fuss.

All of a sudden, we had LOTS of plants to work with. That summer, we planted dozens and dozens of different kinds of annuals and perennials. Some were massively successful, others less so. With such a profusion of plants, it didnt feel like failure when one batch failed to thrive. There was always a backup source of more seedlings, just waiting for space in the ground!

How many plants is too many? How can you make more plants? What do you do with the extras? What happens when conditions are perfect and you wind up with WAAAY more than you intended? It’s one thing when it’s tomatoes that are bountiful. What happens when you have dozens and dozens of viburnum cuttings? Or flats of iris tectorum? Discretely, you start conspiring to leave them in cars with open windows. You think about leaving them on doorsteps out of direct sun.

This year, we were getting things organized in order to start soaking iris seeds to prepare them for their vernalization. I had to cut myself off at 400 seeds. What the heck am I going to do with 400 more iris seedlings this year? I haven’t made room for the 400 plus that we planted last year. They won’t stay small for very long! Time to do some thinning.

Which brings me to what to do when you have more than enough. Give it away. Share it. Sure, people are lousy about showing up when they say they will. That’s just modern life in the Facebook era. Everyone is busy. Bring your plants to a plant swap. Find a group of people who like the plants you love… and offer them for free. Don’t turn your success into a gig. Don’t monetize your love. Give it away! And if you really like the person (or the plant), put a little note on the tag. Some provenance. A story. A connection.

And when you feel like you don’t have enough of something… look around. Chances are, there’s something of abundance nearby. You probably just walked right past it.

)

And that summer, it grows a little, maybe struggles. The next spring… the promise of a bloom like we see in the books and magazines! Right? Well… maybe not. I can’t count the number of times the new plant looked sad. Like I did something wrong. I violated some secret code that was on the plant tag that I didnt read.

Year three… yep, gonna be a bang up year! Massive growth, maybe even time to divide in the fall. Very excited. Spring comes and the plant looks terrible. Spring frosts hit the bud tips hard. Things are looking lousy. No blooms at all this year. Time to give this plant the special shovel pruning. Up and out. Maybe it would be better off somewhere else?

Then it gets tossed aside, maybe into a trug or bucket. Forgotten about until the next day (if I’m lucky… or the next weekend if I really space out)… and then hastily tucked into less prepared ground, with not much more than a lick and a prayer. No coddling, no hugs and kisses. Make it good or walk your ass to the compost pile. Okay, maybe I am not that harsh (all the time)… but the sentiment is genuine.

Which leads me back to the post title: Where Are They Now?

Some of my favorite plants were purchased with the best intentions. Some were given to me by friends (sometimes reluctantly).

This iris fulva (Louisiana iris) was given to me back when we were running a pottery studio and didn’t have much free attention for our garden. This was the iris where I kept hoping it would come up, bloom and knock my socks off. I probably missed seeing it bloom three of the years it grew here. Bit by bit, it moved out of the bed and into the wetter grass. Probably in search of water. That’s where it met up with the mower.

Purchased as weigela ‘Wine and Roses’, which it is not. Never had the dark foliage. Someone probably mixed up the tags in the nursery. Oh well, I over paid for a weigela. But then it failed to thrive. Went from full sun, big nicely turned over soil, mixed with amendments, kinda mulched, watered. Zero growth year two. Jump to year 10-ish… and it was getting overcrowded by the plants that HAD thrived in that spot. It was time to move and lift. Digging it out was really more of a post-mortem. It came out in chunks. Sometimes with roots, sometimes just a rotten hunk of trunk. It was very sad. I tossed it all into a bucket, threw some crappy lawn-dirt on it and forgot about it.

The next year it came back from the dead and decided it would bloom. In a pot. With crappy dirt. Well, it was unimpressive, so I left it where it was, in a big pot in a row of other potted plants that needed love. Winter came and went, it was ignored. Spring returned and it put on more growth despite the bunnies having given it a mid-winter pruning. Wouldn’t you know it? It tried blooming again. Well, can’t have that can we? So I popped the plant/s out of it plastic pot only to find very happy roots and multiple mother plants ready to move into a different pot. So now I had four pots of this weigela instead of one. One was easy enough to kill. Just ignore it. But four. That would take some effort.

The largest, happiest one, the one that looked most likely to get a job after high school, was given to a friend at a plant swap. The second largest one had been reduced down to nibbled bits by the darned bunnies. I figured it was likely dead, so into the compost pile it went. The third one in size looked okay, but by the end of summer asked to be set free. Not sure if lack of friends killed it or lack of water or lack of vacation or healthcare… but it died. Leaving just one weigela. Now that one weigela has rooted itself through the bottom of the plastic pot, insisting that it remain where it has been abandoned for the last few summers.

One of the other plants that we have dug up repeatedly and replanted is one of the first Siberian irises we ever grew, ‘Caesar’s Brother’. It started out in a bed near the wettest grassy part of our front lawn. Over time, the weeds intruded to the point where the weeds grew to exceed the height of the irises. The simplest solution to deal with the weeds was to lift the whole clump of irises, divide everything into smaller chunks, while simultaneously pulling out all the invasive grass and other weeds. The irises went into pots for a few weeks, which turned into months, before finally being planted in the fall.

When it came time to replant them, the only place that was open, and large enough was next to one of the rose bushes, ‘Lilian Gibson’ and the lime green spirea ‘Goldmound’. Within a year, the Siberian iris ‘Caesar’s Brother’ had filled in, and spread to fill the space nicely.

Within a year of being in this new spot, ‘Caesar’s Brother’ was ready to move about 3’ away… just across the path. And BOOM! It took off!

All of which is to say, sometimes moving a plant is the best thing you can possible do. Figuring out the ideal time is absolutely a learning experience. I have found in recent years that recognizing when a plant is dormant is key. Early spring or late summer seems to be the most ideal time to move most plants. It helps that those seasonal overlaps are also frequented with lots of rain and grey skies, which seems to help with getting plants established without the trauma of transplant shock.

And so we did.

We hadn’t even driven 100 yards before we were suddenly giddy. At that point, we had never grown a single dahlia. We had heard that you had to dig them up in the fall, store them over-winter and then hope they grew again in the spring. Sounded like too much work… until that fateful day when they magically jumped into our car. We drove back home with two boxes of pink and red dahlia tubers, totally blissfully unaware of what had just happened. With that one U-turn, we were now officially dahlia addicts.

We planted those dahlias, grew them through the summer, and when they bloomed in late summer, we oohed and ahhed appropriately. They had no names. Didn’t matter. To us, these dahlias were nearly disposable. Heck, they were free. Cheaper than a packet of seed!

Fall arrived, and with the first killing frost, came the surprising blackening of the foliage. Thus signaling the end of dahlias season. We read all about how to dig and store our new tubers… and it worked… sort of. Winter of year 1 we tried storing them in pine shavings. We had no clue about dividing up tubers… so instead we left them intact. Silly beginner mistake.

Spring of 2021 arrived with us excited to try MORE dahlias. Leto suggested we try growing some from seed. We started a couple trays of seeds and planted them out with the tubers from the previous year. The new seedlings looked very different! To give the tubers a head-start on the season, we potted them up before the last frost.

That spring we also bought a little grab bag of dahlia tubers from someone on Facebook. Again, un-named. But hey, they were super cheap. Dahlias with names cost real money! A nice popular dahlia can cost $10-20/ tuber. But an un-named variety might be $5. That bites into the wallet just a little less.

The rich dark reddish maroon one we started calling… yes, you guessed it… Maroon large. Yeah, real creative naming around here. The salmon colored one, in the ball shape, we called: Salmon ball. You see where this is going, right?

Once these seedlings started blooming, we discovered that bees absolutely flip for the more open varieties. Sure, the closed forms are amazing too, but we’re big on encouraging pollinators in the garden. Sure enough, these pollinated dahlias produced seed. See, we were/are hooked. What’s better than this year’s dahlias? Next year’s dahlias! Having something that blooms steadily from August through September and into October (sometimes)… is incredible!

Last year we ordered a few named varieties. They were okay, but it wasn’t the greatest year for dahlias. We had a prolonged cold wet spring that slowed things down early on, and then an even more prolonged drought through the rest of the summer. Tuber production was poor, blooming was scant… but some years are like that.

When I started writing this post, I was trying to figure out a polite way to say that I don’t care one whit about the names attached to my dahlias. But I don’t. I barely keep them sorted from one year to the next. Usually, I put tags on the ones that bloom spectacularly. Come fall, I try to dig them all up anyway. And then I end up with boxes and boxes of unlabelled tubers. Who cares? Really. We’re not some dahlia farm making money selling $20-30 tubers. No one who has ever received one of our dahlia bouquets has asked what their names are.

But, that’s not to say that names are unimportant.

When I started reading about “waterlily” forms of dahlias, I started paying a good deal more attention to the names both of the varieties as well as the names of the hybridizers. I spent a few long evenings diving through websites of folks selling ‘waterlily’ dahlias… and reading about who is crossing what with what. And I realized that it didn’t grab me. Anyone who has read about my fascination with irises knows that I can be single minded about hybridizing. Dahlias, I love… a lot in fact… but I dont have that same level of LOVE (commitment?) that I feel for irises.

Which brings me back around to irises. Doesn’t it always come back to irises?

Okay, maybe that’s just me.

When we started growing this garden over twenty four years ago, long before the coma, we were given a little clump of Siberian irises from a friend. She brought us tons of wild and crazy stuff over the years. Plants that we would do our level best to kill with neglect and ignorance. The Siberian irises she gave us refused to die. Despite being ignored, abused and occasionally mowed over.

Fast forward to about five years ago, and as we started learning about Siberian irises, we found out that they were named ‘Caesar’s Brother’. Quite possibly the most ubiquitous Siberian iris in America. You can find them in almost every state, in almost every soil imaginable. Tough plants. Insanely forgiving. We dug up a clump, divided it into five or six chunks, replanted them and BOOM! They responded like they never knew they were divided. Bloomed beautifully the following spring.

When I started growing more varieties of Siberians, I had expected them to perform in a similar fashion. So far, nothing has come close in terms of vigor. Last May, I went to the Siberian Iris Convention, which was held in Ames, Iowa. One of the host gardens belonged to Lois Girton, whose primary love has been peonies created by AP Saunders. Her garden was spectacular! Huge mature peonies in full bloom, with irises interspersed between them. In her front beds, was a gorgeous display of a Siberian iris I had never come across, but looked a lot like ‘Caesar’s Brother’ called ‘Maranatha’. It was growing in front of a scrumptious golden conifer.

Which brings me back to names…

What is fascinating to me about this iris is that if you dig a tiny bit deeper in the pedigree, you find that ‘Tealwood’ (also from Steve Varner) was just a cross between 'Caesar's Brother' x 'Caesar's Brother'. Unfortunately there is zilch information about ‘Sensenback#6'… but with that much ‘Caesar’s Brother’ in the mix… it is going to look awfully familiar!

Back in the 1970’s there wasn’t a ton of options when it came to Siberian irises. You had primarily dark purples like this, or a few wine-colored ones. Occasional whites were available, but they were pretty meh. In 1976, Currier McEwen introduced ‘Butter and Sugar’ which was the first yellow (and white) Siberian iris. (Eons ago, a friend gave us a small clump of Butter and Sugar, but the guy mowing our lawn managed to cut it to the ground at the worst possible time.)

What is important to understand when it comes to Siberian iris genetics is that purple is the dominant color. When in doubt, it comes in purple. The Model-T of Siberian iris. You can have it in any color as long as it’s purple. And colors like white and yellow are KEY to getting all the other colors. They unlock the reds, pinks, orange-ish browns, speckles, and so on. At some point I want to write more about how Siberian iris coloration changed based on a few key irises… and how. But that’s not why I wrote about names.

Sometimes, the name of the iris reflects the place or the hybridizer. Currier McEwen named a lot of his Siberian irises “Harpswell ___" after his love of Maine. Hybridizers of Louisiana irises tend to use names that reference Louisiana locations or other regional festivities. The name matters.

It also matters if you are going to try your hand at making your own crosses. It is important to be able to identify the parents of your iris offspring. Eventually, you can start to know (a little) what to expect from certain parents. Some iris parents are prolific pollinators, others are great seed parents. That’s worth keeping track of!

Names also matter in terms of how people relate to the plant. A good name can carry a plant for decades. There’s a whole host of naming conventions that are required reading before submitting a name for an iris, for registration with the AIS. https://www.irises.org/hybridizers-growers/iris-registration/#Inst-Reg

I’ll close this post by saying that I keep track of all my irises… from their seeds to their demise. If they don’t make the cut, that goes into the notes too. My dahlias however, are (for now) nameless. Doesn’t make me love them any less.

Growing irises from seed can be as simple as starting many perennial seeds. They prefer a vernalization period, which is really not much more than a technical way of saying that iris seeds need to go through the wet and cold period of winter, before they start to grow in the springtime. You can do this indoors by soaking and rinsing your seeds for up to two weeks, and then refrigerating for up to three months. Or you can follow a simpler approach and plant them into pots before winter sets in. Seeds placed into flats or pots or even module trays before December, then left outdoors through the winter, will experience ample soaking and chilling. Come spring, you’ll have tiny little seedlings.

Why bother growing irises from seed? I think the best reason might be the variety of species that are available. You’re unlikely to find more than a few species of iris at your local nursery... usually Siberian irises, occasionally an iris versicolor (blue flag), and maybe iris ensata (Japanese iris). The reason for this is that most nurseries are buying their plants from huge wholesale growers. Those plants are grown in huge fields and are shipped all over the country. This is the modern agricultural approach that supplies nurseries and garden centers everywhere. Those large growers have to grow in quantity, and as a result, variety suffers. All the more reason to support your specialist iris nurseries, especially if they are in a similar climate to your own. Best of all, a specialist iris nursery will have the ability to answer more complex questions about your iris needs.

Back to seeds! With seeds, you can grow a huge variety of species of irises. Here’s where a little homework can be exciting. Say you have a damp spot in your garden... a spot that’s proved to be squishy after a June rainstorm, and your efforts to plant bearded irises there have failed time and time again. Instead, consider a moisture loving beardless iris like iris versicolor. Almost carefree, species iris can be real problem-solvers in the garden. Best of all, they extend the blooming period for your iris season.

Where can you buy iris seeds? There are few fantastic places to buy iris seeds, with the absolute best being SIGNA (Species Iris Group of North America) https://www.signa.org. Each year, in the fall, members of SIGNA send in seeds that they collect from their irises and they are shared for a very minimal cost to members of SIGNA. For the price of annual membership ($6.50 for e-membership), you can purchase packs of seeds for $1.00/pack. Keep in mind that some of these seeds are very rare, so sometimes a pack of seeds might be fewer than ten seeds in a little glassine envelope. The SIGNA website lists how to take part in the seed exchange, both as someone purchasing seeds, as well as a contributor of seeds.

Other places to find iris seeds include seed swaps which often happen within cooperating iris societies within the American Iris Society. For example, this year was the second year in a row that the Siberian Iris Society offered Siberian iris seeds for free to members of the Siberian Iris Society. The iris seeds came from hand-pollinated crosses of plants hybridized by amazing hybridizers like Bob Hollingworth, Patrick Spence, and Marty Schafer & Jan Sacks! These seeds are a little window into the hybridizing process that these iris breeders work on, year after year. Other cooperating iris societies like the Dwarf Iris Society (https://www.dwarfirissociety.org/seedsale.html) have a seed sale. Joining these cooperating iris societies can be exciting to meet others with similar interests and it can expand your potential iris collections!

Another possibility for seed starting is to save seeds from your own irises. Like saving seeds from your annuals and perennials, you can save seed year to year from your own plants. Wait until the end of summer, when the pods are nice and brown, dry and just beginning to open. Cut the pods and empty them into a shallow dish to dry further. Once they have completely dried, you can store them in a paper envelope until you are ready to plant.

How soon will your iris seeds bloom? This is probably the most frustrating part of growing anything from seed. Most iris seedlings will need one to two years as a seedling before their first bloom. However, when it blooms for the first time you will be the first person to ever see that specific iris bloom! It might be astounding or it might be kinda dull. Don’t judge a seedling flower based on the first year of growth. Give it another year, see how the bloom improves, see if the foliage is attractive, and give it a chance to impress you. I started growing a few different Siberian irises from seeds three years ago, and 2025 was the first year to see some of them bloom. For the first time in our garden we had rich deep yellow Siberian iris blooms (thanks to Marty Schafer and Jan Sacks for sharing some of their seeds!).

Ask a gardener how long until a flower starts to bloom and there’s the inevitable eye-roll. If you want fast blooms, buy a mature plant or rhizome, and within a year or so, you should have your first blooms. This is also the path to take if you are collecting irises from specific hybridizers. While these new seedlings of yours will not have a name, they will have provenance in the form of knowing who shared the seed, where the seed came from, what potential parent irises the seed came from, whether it was open-pollinated or hand-pollinated. In some cases, you might be growing seeds that are part of lineage that was shared by other seed sharing collectors from other countries. We are growing an iris ensata whose provenance takes it back to Russia, having originally been shared by Nina Alexeeva, where they traveled to Jill Copeland in Michigan where they were grown as part of a study, and eventually ended up in Maine, being shared to the SIGNA seed exchange by Sharon Whitney. These seeds have covered a lot of miles!