So do I! I have one clump of a short dark purple one from a neighbor in bloom and Clarence has one bloom.
This will be the first year since I dug them all and replanted so I don't know if they will all bloom or not. I still have lots of bulbs in the barn that I didn't get in the ground that are showing green tips...may just have to do a row in the garden to see what is left.

I hope you get the camera soon! I keep wanting to see what you are describing.

{{gwi:651101}}
{{gwi:651104}}

Sorry, I forgot myself........shouldn't have posted pictures here at all.

Oh, yes, yes yes you post away! I want others to jump in and contribute! You did just the right thing, my dear friend.

Those are beautiful! Looks like you have dozens & dozens of them. Wow!

Everyone, please post your 2009 iris photos!

~Annie

Annie, good for you! I hope you get great blooms and enjoy them. You're a few zones warmer than me, so mine are not even budded yet.
gldno1 - nice blooms!

Iris fanatic here...

My zone is colder than gotta's, so it will be even longer for the ones in the garden to start blooming. The snow is leaving though...although I wish it would hurry up now. I have a bud on the Boysenberry Buttercup iris indoors, that I bought in Feb and potted up. It is supposed to be scented.

Gldno1, I think I have your first purple one. Second is very pretty.

Sierra

I love irises and gldno1, yours are beautiful. I bought some bulbs this year - then forgot to plant them until they were very brown and crusty. But - two of them are just barely breaking the ground now, so I guess it wasn't a complete bust after all! Can't wait to see them flower. :)

Annie! Get a camera, I want to see pictures. I love irises too. Mine are starting to bud. My yellow ones bloom year around.

Edna

Here are a few of mine:
Boo
{{gwi:651107}}

Jazzmatazz
{{gwi:651110}}

Rare Edition
{{gwi:651112}}

Purple Magic
{{gwi:651114}}

Serenity Prayer
{{gwi:651116}}

Alien Mist
{{gwi:651117}}

We are going to need to do an iris trade in the next year or two, Cottage Gardeners!! Look at these lovelies? I bet you all have lovelies we could exchange!!

I can't wait for them to get working on the landscaping in my garden (yes, landscape...they are coming to move my soil around soon and put in my rain tanks!!) so I can get planting more lovelies!!!

I like the idea of a trade. I know the names of most of mine, but there are a few that I don't.

Still have nothing but the clump of Clarence and the purples, but have tons of buds......just waiting.

{{gwi:651118}}


{{gwi:651119}}


{{gwi:651120}}


{{gwi:651122}}


More to come as they are just beginning to bloom. I'm up for a trade. I have lots more colors.

Edna

I'm always up for a trade :) Keep the pics coming, I love to see them.

Edna, I am already up for 3 of yours! I have the pale yellow or something that looks like it. Do the colors of the reddish ones really match as well as the photo shows?

Iris blooms are just perfect to me.....I will be checking mine daily. Of course, we are getting daily rains which isn't really good for the iris or the blooms!

I tried to save names, but many tags got lost in the move.
I have cemetery whites that came from an ancestor's grave. He was buried in 1863.
Repeat bloomer yellow and cemetery white.

{{gwi:651124}}

scented bubbles

{{gwi:651126}}

Afterglow, which came from a friend, originally from her grandmother's garden.

{{gwi:651128}}

Rescued old purple from Oklahoma.

{{gwi:651129}}

They are beautiful. My favorites are the antiques. I keep looking longingly at the collection Argyle Acres has. I love the soft tones of Afterglow.

Edna-I LOVE that red one, the last pic you have!!

Irises are my absolute favorite!! Mine are budding-I'm so excited!!!

How do you post pics? Or, rather, resize them? My photos always get rejected due to being too large.

Do Dutch irises count? :-)

This is 'Rosario' and she plays well with allium 'Purple Sensation'

{{gwi:574426}}

This is Pink Surprise.
I ordered it from a company on eBay. It was a tiny rhizome last year. Disappointed about that, but if it grows into that, I can wait:

{{gwi:651131}}
Not blooming yet, but hope it does.

I have a chocolate one, lemon yellow with white beards, a red with orange beards, orange and yellow (dwarf variety), Dreamsickle (orangey-white), deep purple, pale blue, pale blue-violet, Giant white (rebloomer - VERY fragrant), Sky blue, Bronze with red-violet falls and golden beards, Aztec Gold (golden with Red violet falls & golden beards), Pale red-violet with burnt sienna falls and gold beards, French-Vanilla with red-violet falls (gold beards), Blue with Deep blue-violet falls (golden freckles and golden beards, an early bloomer; very grape fragrance), and more.

Below are the old photos I have posted in my PhotoBucket.
It doesn't have my photos from last year...yet.

I'm up for trades!
Yes, Dutch and Louisiana Irises would be okay with me, too.

Edna & Kathy, those are ALL gorgeous.

Thanks everyone! They are all so beautiful!!!
Drool...drool.

~Annie
...saving my babysitting money to get a camera.

Here is a link that might be useful: Some of Annie's Irises

Annie, Photobucket wants me to login to see your irises. Can you make it public for us?

Just type in "guest2".

The quality of those photos aren't good quality. They were taken before I had a digital camera, so not as good as my later ones, but I cannot access the newer picture files right now to upload them to my photobucket account.

~Annie

{{gwi:651132}}

{{gwi:651133}}

{{gwi:651134}}

{{gwi:651135}}

{{gwi:651136}} Very fragrant rebloomer

I also have two miniature dwarf: one black and one deep purple, a plain "grape scented" purple, an antique burgundy/plum (probably similar to one Annie has pictured)...
and these are not mine but I love them! A photo from the neighborhood!
{{gwi:651137}}

ggg, the white may be Immortality. I have it.

I just love them all and want everything I see. It's a sickness.

Annie, I was able to access the album. I really love the path through the irises. Your gardens make me think of an older lady, author, illustrator who lived in the northeast. She was very famous, walked barefoot through her orchard. Everything was so natural. I am having a senior moment and can't recall her name.

Another iris bloomed in spite of the daily rains and lack of sun,{{gwi:651138}}

Immortality is blooming but the rains have damaged the bloom so I will wait to show it.

Am I the only one here who doesn't grow bearded irises?

{{gwi:651139}}
This is the only iris that blooms here.

Nell

Foxesearth, I grow all irises. I also have yours, siberian, lousianna, prismatica, versicolor, bulbous iris, a few virginica crosses and some other cross species irises. I don't think I've ever bought an iris either!

gldno1~ I believe you are referring to Tasha Tudor! She passed recently...

Another Iris lover here, everybody's Iris are so pretty, I bet some of them have a delicious scent.
I just finished rescuing what's left of my bearded Iris from the couch grass bed, they're replanted but will take a year or so to recover. I have all the names so should be able to match them up when they decide to bloom again.

becr, thank you, thank you. Yes, exactly - Tasha Tudor! I knew she had recently died.

WOW...you all have such beautiful irises. I have a few in bloom now and would love to be included in a trade for bearded irises and others as well. I don't know the name of any of my irises (shame on me).

This is a bright yellow (very large) that my best friend gave me 2 years ago.
{{gwi:651140}}From Garden 2 May 2009

{{gwi:624235}}From Garden 2 May 2009

I've seen this one around alot, must be very common. Not the best picture but you probably will recognize it.
{{gwi:624237}}From Garden 2 May 2009

These two are from Brenda (Gottagarden). I have more that she sent me yet to bloom. I can't wait to see the colors. THANKS BRENDA...they are beautiful!!!
{{gwi:624233}}From Garden 2 May 2009

Vikki

Vikki, those are gorgeous. I think I have all those colors in my collection. I don't know the names either. Some were here some are passalongs.

I love seeing everyone's irises!!

It's too early for mine to be blooming, but I'd love to share some from last year and the year before. Just click on Flowers on the right side of the screen. You can enlarge any photo by clicking on it, but I think it'll tell you the name of each iris if you roll your mouse over it.

Susan

Here is a link that might be useful: Susan's Irises

Many of the newer varieties have delicious color combinations and have very ruffled falls. Very lovely indeed, but I have read that they have been so widely bred for color, that their fragrance has been bred out or it has practically disappeared in new varieties. In my mind, that is what makes an IRIS so special - their color AND their unique fragrance! It seems that everything is for show these days. That is a terrible tragedy.
I am glad to see rose breeders working hard to bring back the highly fragrant old roses and/or create new ones that have intense fragrance. Like roses, what is an iris without its fragrance? Got to Hobby Lobby and buy silk ones and be done with it FGS! Jeez.

I hope there are Iris breeders out there somewhere who are being responsible breeders, mindful of this loss and are working to bring fragrance back to their Irises.

Most of mine are the old-fashioned ones - maybe not so fancy, but their fragrance is divine.

My fears with all the new HYBRID flowers of all species of flora is that mankind will eventually breed out their ability to reproduce via seeds, which will ultimately bring about the demise of many if not all flowers (as we know them). Many, many old varieties are now lost to the world that existed in abundance in my Great-grandmother's day (1859 - 1962). She described them to me when I was a child.

I have also accumulated many old books and read much about these old flower varieties in these old books written in the 19th century and early 20th century, wherein the authors mentioned flowers that disappeared even in their day due to breeding for bigger, specific flower variations without regard to maintaining the old varieties. The old varieties, common in most gardens in those days were considered "old-fashioned" and therefore of no value in the "modern world" - this being the attitude of too many in the Victorian thru' the Edwardian age. Lost are varieties that once were a mainstay of the Old Cottage Gardens. Their descriptions of these old flowers were incredible. (not particularly Irises, but hundreds of flowers species). Such a shame.
(The same happened with tulips, you many note if you are also a tulip enthusiast).

Your thoughts or knowledge on this history regarding Irises in particular?

For any interested, I can post excerpts from these books, describing these old flowers now lost to the world.

~Annie

Yes it is a shame, this is why I still grow old varieties even if the don't really fit in with the scheme of things. When plants go out of favor and discarded, sigh!!! I think it was one of the Shasta daisies I was reading about recently, one that had been thought to have been lost but was rediscovered in a garden, there was a great hoopla about finding it. Food for thought.

Annette

I would rather have older varieties of anything, as opposed to the newer hybrids.

This is from last May. A rebloomer, with my Herbert azaleas. The irises just beyond, just out of focus, came with the house. I'm not sure what they are.

{{gwi:651141}}

I love the newer hybrids. As you might guess if you looked at my pictures, I'm a sucker for big, ruffled, extravagant iris blooms. But I also love fragrance, and many of my favorites have lots of it.

Some of the catalogs will single out fragrant irises, or put together fragrant collections. I order from BlueJ, which offers a fragrant category. They also mention fragrance in individual descriptions.