WiseAcre Gardens

 Old Yellow Iris

 Old Yellow is the only name I have for this Iris.  I can’t be sure but clues point to it being from the 1940 - 1950s.

 This Iris is responsible for turning me into a perennial gardener. I had no idea  It was a chance meeting and an implusive act that sparked an infatuation that grew into a passion. It’s been around 15 years since we first met, yet Old Yellow remains the favorite in my perennial garden.

 I foraged it from an old abandoned farm..  The house had burned sometime in the mid to late 50s.  Near the ruins was a rock outcrop that had been transformed into a terraced garden. Someone had spent a lot of time and effort building stone walls where I found pennies embedded in the mortar dated 1940 and 1941. The only perennials that remained were a couple varieties of Sedum, some Hens and Chicks and one lone fan of the Iris.

 I could see that the Iris wouldn’t last another season. Quack-grass had invaded and the Iris was giving up. I must have had a sentimental moment because I dug them up and brought them home. I started my first flower garden with those rescued plants. Up to that time a garden for me meant only one thing - vegetables. Before long I was conspiring with the other side forming perennial foraging parties.  The creative  aspect of creating a flower garden had captured my interest.

 Each year the vegetable garden shrunk. Perennials, stone walks, boulders  _ OH MY,  Bee Balm, Iris, day lilies, phlox, black-eyed Susans, Sedums and Lupines had taken over. I was now addicted, I needed more and more.  I planted as if I was growing cash crops.  I still do.

 I am only half kidding when I tell people I want to be a Landscape Artist but no one told me that I was supposed to use a brush. Even if someone had told me, it would not have mattered. I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler. If I wanted to be a landscape artist I was going to have to do it the hard way. My brushes are a fork, shovel, and rake and use plants, stone and water as paint. My canvas is soil. My inspiration is nature.  I’ll never become an artist though.  But I’m doing what I love and I’ll never work another day in my life.  I’m a gardener now.  Something as simple as digging up a plant altered the path of my life.

 Fifteen years later and now there are hundreds maybe even thousands of this Old Yellow Iris. I’ve planted them all over the nearby village and even sent some around the world. Now others are sharing them and I can’t help but feel good about resucing that lone survivor. We’ve both thrived. I can look back now and see that we rescued each other. We had help and thank all those who shared their knowledge and plants.

 This is a medium height Iris and very vigorous. But the thing that really gets me is how long a blooming time it has. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say it will bloom for 2 weeks. It certainly isn’t an Iris that you would be afraid of missing the flowers if you went away for a week-end.

If anyone had an idea of what the name is I would appreciate finding out.

Once upon a time long ago but not so far away was a young man who wanted a market garden. As a wedding present he and his beautiful wife received a plot of 50 acres and a shack.  The land was well drained and as fertile as the wife. Before long vegetables and toddlers sprung up and flourished on the small homestead.

 In those days communes dotted the area and the young couple had many friends that helped guide the young couple in the zen of gardens. The communists were more than willing to s hare their knowledge with the city raised couple and often lent a hand. Much was learned and the gardens grew.

 After a few years the young man decided to expand the gardens and sell the fruits of his labor. A quarter acre of strawberries was planted and they prospered. Another quarter acre of vegetables grew alongside the berries and at harvest time the couple had no problem selling them.

 The next year the couple looked forward to a very good harvest. The strawberries had spread filling out the wide rasied beds so carefully prepared and had set a tremendous amount of fruit. The vegetable garden had expanded again and it too was growing as if the young  man had purchased magic seeds.

 It was then that one of the communists asked if the couple would tend to his goats and cow while he went away to see distant family. The young man could not deny someone who had aided him so he went to work building a fence. And it was no ordinary fence, it rose 7 feet high and had 6 strands of barbed wire and 3 strands of electric fencing. It was a fence worthy of being compared to the Berlin Wall. Only aircraft could go over and only the sucide inclined would attempt to go through it.

 Everyone was happy. The goats had half an acre to browse and children who fed them more than they needed. The cow was content and the family had milk and butter. Life was good and everything flourished. 

 Soon the berries would be ready to pick. It was only a matter of days now and the man checked the beds after work each day. The wife took spring vegetables to work every day where she sold them and her co-workers were eagerly looking forward to the berry harvest while the husband made arrangements at the farmers market to set up a booth for the season.

 Then came the day the man left the dairy farm where he worked early to go buy baskets for the harvest. When he arrived home he noticed something strange. The pasture was empty except for the cow. He checked the fence and found nothing wrong, no breaks or gaps and the electric fence was still working. A mystery indeed. There was no sign of the goats, they had vanished as if abducted by aliens.

 Now the search was on. The man looked down the hill where the pasture extended into the woods but found no sign. Puzzled he extended his search to the other side of the hill across the road where the barn blocked his view of the fields. Going around the barn on the tractor path he then saw utter destruction. Three quarter acre of garden was eaten. Every single strawberry plant was gone. Only a few stubs of vegetables remained of what once was a lush oasis.

 How that man refrained using a baseball bat I’ll never know. The very next day the goats went off to the livestock auction.

So now I tell people who want to keep goats

• Tether a goat by using a short leash on a high branch
• Fence in a goat by wraping it in chicken wire

I don’t know who bought or what happened to those goats. Maybe they got a good home. But my hope is they were eaten. And you know Ma cow was much happier without those pests too.

BTW: I got $60 bucks for all 10 goats and gave it to the owner when he came back since it wan’t his fault. But to this very day I still wonder how they got out.

 EDIT: Thought of another method of keeping a goat restrained

All natural environmentally safe

Carefully place a big rock on them.

 FORD

Foolhardy 

Oversize

Rock

Delivery

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