Month: June 2011

There’s no love lost for us and the tree out on the back patio (inelegant thing – someone did a hack job on it ages ago and it’s never really recovered), but we tend to it, remove the suckers that it produces all spring, and otherwise pretty much ignore it.

I was removing all of the new growth at the base of the tree when I accidently snipped the Christmas lights that Neen strung around it in our first year in the house. Sad. I went to unwind them, and all the bark on the back side of the tree started falling away in 4”x10” chunks. Uh-oh.

A closer look revealed that the entire back of the tree has been reduced to powdery detritus.

And the cracks run all the way up the branches.

There are plenty of tiny ants, but they really look like ants, not termites. Regardless, time to start taking the thing down? I’m not totally sure how to manage it – if there’s a nest in the tree, I don’t want to give them time to evacuate and set up camp in a new nearby spot. Tricky.

This is a magnificent year for irises – I don’t know if it’s something about the weather or if they just really appreciated the sluggo, but they are out in force.

I never get tired of seeing them bloom.

The poor things, though, are overrun with aphids. Right after this photo, I started wiping down the buds with a wet cloth and then spraying them with soapy water. Seems to have helped a lot.

One last photo where you can see how many buds there are waiting in the wings.

Given that we’ve gotten under 10 blooms total each of the last few years, this sudden extravagance of irises is thrilling. Such great flowers.