Gerald Darby Siberian Iris

Gerald Darby Siberian Iris—It started innocently with that deep purple foliage and before I knew it, Gerald had ingrained himself into my life. In the first post about Gerald, I didn’t know his name. By the second post, we were bosom buddies. That post accidentally touched the life of Judy Darby, who stopped by because her son who’d passed away was named Gerald Darby. After a lovely exchange in comments and e-mail, she has a start of my Gerald in her garden, and I know the sweetness of community through blogging and gardening. Happy New Year, Judy.

Sweet Heidi Cranesbill

Sweet Heidi Cranesbill—This was the first year I noticed how long cranesbill blooms and how little it needs from me—qualities that quickly make a plant near and dear to my heart. Sweet Heidi gave the Jolly Bee a run for its money but with smaller, pink petals. This fall I bought several other varieties so, if they survive the freeze in their nursery pots, hopefully 2010 will also be the year of cranesbill.

Broadway Lights Daisy

Broadway Lights Daisy—This Proven Winner demands nothing from me and danced all summer long with new blooms that open light yellow and become white. I divided my one plant into many, so hopefully I’ll have a nice drift of these next year.

Crocosmia & Blackberry Lily

Crocosmia & Blackberry Lily—I love the cheerful, elegant flowers of crocosmia and blackberry lily and stocked up on several varieties this year. Despite many painful hours on my knees with the camera, I never did get a properly exposed photo of that red devil Lucifer.

Sungold Tomatoes

Sungold Tomatoes—Yum. This was my first year to grow sungolds and little did I know what I’d been missing. I wish I could pluck that one and eat it, just to feel the sweetness of summer again.

Dark Orange Daylily

Dark Orange Daylily—Of all of my beautiful daylilies, the dark orange ones most warmed my heart this year, especially with the late afternoon sun shining through them.

Oranges & Lemons Gaillardia

Oranges & Lemons Gaillardia—I love the delicate form of this gaillardia. It was poorly sited with fierce sun and hardly any water and still it bloomed and bloomed. Unfortunately, it met a sorry death when it fell out of my transplant bucket this fall and lay in the sun for a week shriveling up like a prune. But I’ll get another one.

Pat Austin English Rose & Sedum

Pat Austin English Rose—I don’t buy roses anymore due to upkeep and deer, but this is one I will always have in my garden. Its thorns are as big as my thumb, so the deer (mostly) don’t eat it. And the complex apricot blooms tug at my heart. Unfortunately, I’ve had this one for three years, which is about as long as roses live for me, so I may be in the market for a new one.

Coppertina Ninebark & Bergenia

Coppertina Ninebark—If forced to pick my absolute favorite plant of 2009, it would be my Coppertina Ninebark. Every time I walked past it, it just made me happy, from one season to the next. Coppertina has an underlying wamth that my Diablo and Summerwine ninebarks lack. New foliage is golden in the sun and fall foliage turns from copper to fiery red. Of course, it’s going to be too big in that spot next year. But I’ll deal with that in the spring.

I’ve been laying low for the past week so I didn’t have to admit that I lost my innocence. I know you’ll all be shocked. And, on top of that, I’m still buying plants.

But how can I not? Boxhill Farms has irises on sale 20% off, and most of them are in bloom so I don’t have to divine what they look like from a sepia-faded plant tag or bad Internet photos ranging from chartreuse to fuchsia. It’s important to see them in living color, so to speak, because I’m being a bit more discriminating now about what I buy. Okay, I’m actually just running out of space.

So Saturday, I unloaded the back of the car after my “discriminating” (i.e. limited) shopping extravaganza and placed the plants where I planned to plant them—ah, yes, I actually think about that now before I buy. You know, at this rate, I just might become a gardener after all.

But what did I not find after I unloaded? The innocence iris that I simply had to have because it may very well be the most beautiful iris that I have ever seen in my life … until that other one I bought blooms.

“Hmm,” I thought. “I’m pretty sure I bought some innocence. I wonder where it is?” So I wandered over to see if I accidently put my innocence in the holding bed out of habit. But it was not to be found.

“Hmm,” I thought. “Maybe I was so discriminating that I decided not to buy any innocence. Maybe I’m becoming pennywise.” Then I saw the new pot of ajuga that I probably didn’t need, so I had to rule out pennywise.

“Hmm,” I thought. “I’m quickly narrowing the options to Alzheimer’s here.” The women in my family have a long, if not proud, heritage of forgetting that the corn is in the microwave until after supper, when they’re putting in a cup of tea. Sometimes this also occurs with green beans. So I looked for my innocence in the microwave, but I found only splatter.

As the weekend passed, I got more and more disgusted with myself for losing my innocence. I know when I’ve found a good plant, and I know what not to let go. And at some point, I’d spent more time worrying about losing my innocence than it was worth.

When I got into the car Monday morning, there was my long-lost innocence on the passenger side. “Hmm,” I thought. “I’m pretty sure I lost that in the back seat.”

Mystery solved. Meet Gerald Darby. One of my favorite plants in the garden this year now has a name.

How’d I find out who he is? I stumbled upon another Gerald over Memorial Day weekend. I was so excited to find one that I was tempted to buy it. But there was only one, so I left it for some other gardener to accidentally discover—just the way my Gerald came into my life. Since then, I’ve been waiting for him to bloom so I could tell you his name. Waiting … and waiting … and waiting.

Gerald and I are tight. After the cheater’s iris incident, Gerald has been hanging with his homies in the high-security Iris Protection Program with electric fence, liquid fence, and fox urine. I even peed on him myself for good measure. And I haven’t left the house for a week. I told the folks at work I was having my wisdom teeth removed.

The other night, I got up “for a glass of water” and shined the flashlight outside to check for Gerald’s nodding heads. As soon as I wake up, I peer out to see if he’s been eaten. Over morning coffee (he takes cream), he tells me about his plans for the day—the standing around with his toes in the dirt, the blowing in the breeze, the leaning toward the sun. Later, in case tragedy were to strike while my back is turned, Gerald poses for some intimate photos of his tight blossoms as they unfurl millimeter by millimeter. After dinner last night, Gerald whispered in my ear that today would be his day to shine.

After all that, even though I love the guy, Gerald in flower turns out to be rather unremarkable. Frankly, he looks a helluva lot like a helluva lot of other purple irises. But his impressive display of purple foliage in early spring and his long, graceful purple stems make him quite a handsome fellow overall—the way an average guy cleans up real good when he puts on a tux.

I’ve bought some beautiful plants this spring, but I made a hard and fast rule that I’m not featuring them until they’ve survived their bootcamp year in my garden. It’s hard to resist because they’re as stunning as celebrities fresh from the greenhouse spa and pampered with perfect light, bottled water, and regular dosings of fertilizer. But it just ain’t right to let them sashay in and steal the show until they really live here. Rules are rules.

However, as I was leaving for work yesterday morning, I noticed that a bloom had opened on my new eye of the tiger iris, and it was just as gorgeous as the tag promised. The bloom was fresh and perfect and wasn’t going to last the day—a moment I wasn’t walking away from without taking a photo because I’ve walked away from too many photos in my life to take care of “more important things”—so I glanced at my watch to see if I had time. As usual, I was running late, but I could skip the Target errands. We only needed toilet paper anyway.

I was happily snapping iris photos when the dogs went ballistic because the tame deer had stopped by for a visit. Now this deer is not just numb to the suburbs, some dumbass clearly tamed it and let it go. It stops by every once in a while and is completely unmoved by three scrawny dogs yapping at its knees, and it doesn’t flinch when Mr. Sorry grabs the dogs by the scruff and hauls them off so they don’t torment the poor thing. Through it all, the deer just stands there, calm as a cow. You’d think I’d take some good photos, but I refuse. Some human made that critter that way—and that ain’t right. Rules are rules.

So I got some photos of that one perfect bloom and was drooling over several other fat buds that had burst their seams and would be fully open by afternoon. That iris was just so stunning that, come to think of it, I was going to make an exception—just this one time, of course—what would it hurt? And it would be a perfect photo for my next post (which was not going to be this one, by the way).

When I got home from work, I grabbed the camera, eager to take some shots of those freshly unfurled blooms in the late afternoon sun. But I couldn’t see the iris from the porch. So I walked out to the bed where I last left it and—much to my disgust—the deer had chomped every single one of the fat buds. Nothing else in the bed was even nibbled, only the cheater’s iris. Gone. But I do have the photos.

Isn’t that a beautiful iris? With foliage like that, I don’t even care if it blooms. I bought it last fall when irises were on sale 5 for $15, or something crazy like that. I really only wanted that one iris, but since they were on sale, I gave it a go and picked out four others. Buy in bulk, I say. Thing is, I have no idea what that beautiful iris is named because I lost the tag.

Of course I have tags for all of my common plants that I can identify from 500 yards. Yep, that’s lady’s mantle. And that’s ajuga. And that’s lamb’s ear. And, hey, there’s the tag stuck discreetly in the ground in case I wander into the garden with Alzheimer’s one day.

But do my irises have tags? Nope. And my hordes of yellow daylilies with different colored throats—do they have tags? Nope. And do my bronze, orange, and terra cotta heucheras have tags? Nope. But that’s just as well because they all have names like Mocha and Crème Brulee that make me crave a cup of coffee and a gooey dessert.

And where do the tags go? I always lose a few when we add a new puppy to the pack, but these dogs are bored with tags by now. And I can’t find a way to blame it on the slugs or deer, the usual culprits in my gardening woes. Maybe the tags went to the same place as that five dollar bill that I lost when I was a kid and still wonder about occasionally.