More from mom’s handwritten notebook…

< Below, an example of Wm. Mohr iris (1925) from Wayman’s iris catalog in 1940. >

Sunday was a beautiful day. We rode at seven — at six I was out looking at my Wm. Mohr iris, which was unfolding its first bloom. By afternoon it was clear out and it is just as lovely as the claim. I never have seen such delicate veining or such transparency on an iris before.

Mother’s Buto bloomed; also its first venture, and the flower was very large for such a small plant.

< Buto was an iris variety from H.P. Sass, introduced in the mid 1920s. >

Today my first Talisman bloomed, and I can’t describe what a lovely blend of apricot and violet it is. 

< Source of Talisman image: https://garden.org/plants/photo/290357/ >

We had a sprinkle of rain and during the night and early morning the wind whipped around so that we picked the Wm. Mohr and Talisman to save them and put them in the black vase.

I think they would win a prize at any flower show. I just wonder if any other people in Sioux Falls have such lovely iris as we have.

I can’t wait for the iris catalogs to start to come. Mother said only tonight that Schreiner’s should come pretty quick. I want to get some more iris from them this year as I had such good luck with the others they sent me.

I’m afraid the Carl Salbach iris mother got was too tender for this climate, or else we had an unusually severe winter for iris in 1937.

I believe all of our new iris have bloomed that will, this season Rialgar and Mrs. Valerie West, out by the big stones, are almost too small to bloom. I’ll have to give them some Vigaro to make them strong for next year.

Sunday I weeded in the garden a while and dug dandelions while Marion worked on the north rose hedge, but it was too hot to do much.

So far I haven’t found any leaves on my mulberry trees but they look green at the bottom and Marion says not to worry. At least our silver leaf maples are all doing fine.

Mother is delighted to find that her mountain ask tree has come up from the roots and is growing fine. She knew the honey locust was flourishing but thought the end had come for the mountain ash. The grasshoppers did kill the vitex (??) and the other two shrubs she planted by the Chinese elms, though.

We put our some arsenic grasshopper bait Saturday when the baby hoppers were hatching so thick. It’s poisonous, so Gael < their dog > had to be kept on a leash but Pop says it killed quantities of hoppers. That will give us a brief respite for things to grow strong in before the big ones start to fly here from away.