Fickle April

Spring is such a lovely time of year. I love seeing all of the buds on the trees and the flowers bursting out all over. April has been a little fickle though. Hasn't it. One day we're outside walking barefoot through the yard and the next we're bundled up again as if it's the dead of winter. I for one an definitely ready to put my winter coat away for the next few months.

Frost warnings be damned, I've been busy whipping our yard into shape. I planted hostas under my dogwood tree and doffodils and tulips near our mailbox. We found buds on my blueberry bushes and the tiger lilies look poised to make a great showing this year.

I'm not doing all the work myself though. On Friday the gardeners came to do the annual clean up and remove a yew to make way for the deck - yay! Anyway, the guys did a great job. They tamed the massive euonymous and blew all the leaves out of the bushes and so much more. Most of the work they did is great. There is just one problem. My irises.

I have a large-ish patch of irises on the side of my house that I love dearly. I watch for them every year and take a ridiculous number of pictures of them. I am a big fan of irises. As you can see in these pictures, they're about to pop. At least they were. It seems that our gardeners were a little overzealous with the leaf blowers and now most of my irises are hacked to death. In the larger picture in this post you can see a bud that has lost it's twin. It's just sad.

I'm not sure how to avoid this next year. Maybe if they came earlier in the season before the irises really got going it would help. This year I'll treasure the few hardy souls that withstood the onslaught.