I noticed my first one today too but the digital camera battery was dead so I'll post tomorrow. It's unusual for me to have blooms before June but we had a very mild winter so everything in the garden is alive and flexing their muscles. I'm not able to get around too good right now due to a severe sciatica attack but I'm on the mend and looking forward to a great year in the garden.

Strange start to the bloom season here. I have daffs, tulips, and irises in bloom at the same time. I don't recall this happening before. The daffs and tulips are usually long gone before a bearded iris blooms. My first blooms started late last week on three IBs. I have some more showing color and one AB sdlg. is about to bloom. Several in this cross are budded, but the one showing color is the tallest. It will be a 3/8th arilbred, my first time to get seedlings from such a cross. I have about six survivors in this cross. I also have a Louisiana that is well advanced. Walter Moores

I almost missed realizing that there was a bloom on Kickapoo Kangeroo. I just happened to notice the splash of color as I was walking by on the way to Spot Starter. I am sure it will look much better when it blooms on a real stalk LOL! Kay- I know you love purple and KK is purple and very crazy splashed colors. Nancy- I wouldn't go by the bloom on China Spring to say it is Siberian Iris bloom time around here. Nothing else even has stalks so this one is out of the gate way ahead of all others and in a different time zone.

I know some people nip off the side buds to get larger flowers, & those large flowers are definitely impressive. Especially if you put them in an arrangement. I got so many complements on Bartzella & Coral Sunset. Coral and yellow peonies are never seen around here, & nothing that big. Yeah, I know we need the rain, & really hasn't been too bad. So far we haven't had the heavy storms we get lots of years that blow the petals off peonies & knock iris to the ground. And there have been plenty of gaps where I can at least walk around & look, although too muddy to do much. But watch the weeds grow.