Bearded iris blooms in spring but unfortunately they are once-a-year bloomers so the rest of the years there’s nothing except the leaves for show in the garden. And the flowers only last a couple of days too so must enjoy them while they’re flowering.

I’ve planted them in between the other perenials in the flower beds and they’re happily growing with the waratahs, columbines and the herbs. I’ve grown to love them over the years and I’m trying out new species at the moment, I need more room for them!

I have 3 growing in my backyard; this is their first blooms so they’re not as nice as they’re supposed to be. Plus these 3 are blooming off a single branch so the blooms are not as big. Hopefully next year it’ll do better.

This bloom is on its own so its bigger than the other 3. I like this one; nice color and the flower’s in perfect symmetry. I hope I’ll have better luck with them this year because last year I neglected to water them thinking they do better with less water and the inevitable happened; they died of thirst after a couple of hot summer days.

It was rather grubby even before I took the cover off; all covered with dirt, lint and gawd knows what else. So a quick vacuum on the outside made my job a little easier before I proceeded to take the cover off. Only then did I realized that the original color of the fan was actually black and the installer or builder of the house spray painted it white to match the ceiling!

When the cover was open I was greeted with more dirt! In fact there was so much buildup of dirt no wonder the fan would not  spin. So I continued vacuuming the dirt off doing the best I could scratching the white paint off the fan as I went along.

After vacuuming I tried the fan but it was still not spinning so I decided to take the fan off the motor to find more dirt inside! Maybe I have to replace the whole unit if the motor’s not working anymore. But luckily after more vacuuming the motor started to spin good. I reattached all the fan and cover and save myself a new shower fan!

Then finally my wait paid off and true enough Kmart had a sale on their ladders and I jumped to the chance. This ladder was normally retail for $139 but has been reduced to $69 so it was a good buy. I think I waited a whole year for this!

Its a simple step ladder and I particularly like this one because you can stand with both legs on either sides when you’re on top. Normal ladders only let you stand on one side so this will be safer than those ones. Plus its very light so making it easy to carry around.

Not only that this ladder can be folded into 14 positions for different jobs around the house from the simple step ladder to an overhanging ladder to a scaffold. Its incredible, I’m loving it! Every household should have one.

And it was a simple door seal that will do the trick for me. All I needed was to seal the opening underneath and something that will cover the gap will suffice. A door seal will do just that.

I used to think all door seals are the same until I went to check them out at the hardware store..there were so many to choose from! I decided on this one which I thought would be sufficient for what I need.

I must say the instruction took me a few minutes to fully understand what I needed to do and it wasn’t a simple task like what I initially thought it’ll be. Well I’m glad I studied the instruction well before I went ahead to install it.

And the end result was quite satisfactory I might add. Now I don’t feel the draft blowing in through the gap anymore and hopefully less dust as well in summer.

Since I only have 1 rhizome to each species of bearded iris I decided to plant them in individual pots and let them multiply themselves  so hopefully I’ll have a whole bunch of them in the not too distant future. Bearded iris like well drain soil and are very hardy, they do not need much watering and when planting be sure to leave the rhizomes just exposed or else the rhizome will rot.

I’ll let you know how they turn up in summer. Fingers crossed.

Here they are! There are 7 different kinds with different colors and I ordered one of each. All of them arrived along with a booklet of growing guide and another catalog from them. This is so exciting I can’t contain myself!

The rhizomes are all packed in individual bags with growing medium and labeled accordingly. I can’t wait to plant them out this weekend. I think I’ll grow them in individual pots first and let them multiply till I get heaps of them to grow in the gardens!

So in cases like this I would try to recycle the potting mixes by rejuvenating the mixes with fresh rich compost, slow release fertilizer and water crystals. What I’d do is try to get rid of the roots from the previous plants by shifting the mix through a mesh before mixing in the rejuvenating ingredients.

However if you’re too lazy to do all that yourself you could get yourself a box of PotMate from Debco. It has all the ingredients needed to rejuvenate your used potting mix so mixing the recommended dose in with the mix would be easy and quick. I don’t know how good this product is because I’ve never used it before. I’d prefer to add my own ingredients!

Here’s my potted dahlias, yes I know they’re supposed to be grown in the grown but with limited space in my backyard I’d resorted to growing them in pots and they do okay considering. Plus its easier to maintain them like staking and tying up the floppy branches.

So this is what needs to be done to dahlias during winter; cut down the whole plants to the ground. Throw the cuttings into the compost bin, remove the stakes and get rid of all the ties that were used to tie them together.

Dig up the whole root ball, get rid of as much dirt as you can. Unless you want to propagate more plants next year you can keep the whole root ball intact. Store the whole thing upside down in a cool dry place. Reason for storing them upside down is because if you store them upright water that’s still remain in the stems can flow back into the root tubers and rot can occur which was what happened last year.

So I opted to order them online and here’s what I ordered; 7 different species all in rhizomes each costing about $7-$8 plus postage. I do think it’s a little expensive but never mind…

This one is called Sound of Gold.

Star Status

Arpage

Breakers

Pass the wine

Silkirim

Burgundy Bubbles.

I should be getting them all sometimes early next week. All these bearded irises should be easy to grow so I’ll be growing them in pots and hopefully in about a year’s time they’d have multiplied 10 forth!