The Weirdness Chronicles 2008 - Chapter 2

Iris are one of my favorite flowers. I have bearded iris, Japanese iris, Siberian iris, Iris dardanus, Iris bucharica and a lot of unidentified iris. After seeing them on various blogs, I fell in love with miniature iris. They bloom early so I thought they would go well in my Semi-Shady garden with the other miniature spring blooming bulbs already growing there.

Two years ago I took the plunge and ordered an assortment of miniature iris from Brecks. I tossed the 20 bulbs to achieve a more naturalistic pattern than my usual rows. After planting them, I carefully covered the freshly dug earth with leaves to prevent the squirrels from digging up the bulbs and eating them.

The wind blew away the leaves and the squirrels feasted. I was hopeful that they might have missed a few bulbs but my hopes were dashed last spring when nothing emerged in the area where I had planted and the squirrels had eaten.


Look what I found today! Sorry about the poor quality of the photo, but I was very excited. It appears that the squirrels missed a bulb. Either squirrels or rabbits have decimated all of the blossoms on my crocus. Perhaps this flower survived because they don’t like the taste of iris? And where was this iris last year? Why did it wait two years to come up?