82 bar rises 29.65 omph ESE dew-point 69 sunrise 6:23 sunset 8:07 Lughnasa
Waning Gibbous Corn Moon moonrise 2246 moonset 1316
These are iris rhizomes. I spent the morning and a hour this afternoon digging these up out of our raised bed. You have to shear off the individual rhizomes from the mother rhizome, now spent from having thrown up its flower. Cutting the leaves helps reduce transpiration when transplanting and helps avoid transplant shock.
Normally I would soak them in a bleach solution, then coat them in captan as a way of reducing fungus and other diseases, but these iris were very healthy. Only one had any soft rot and I saw no evidence of iris borer either, so instead of treating them for disease, I spread them out on the same screen door I used to dry the onions. They’ll dry a couple of days. Tomorrow I’ll dig out the lower bed of iris, where all these will go and do the same to them.
As I sat on the edge of the raised bed, cutting the large fans of leaves and shaving off a clean cut with an old carving knife, a change in front stirred up a fair wind, blowing the leaves on the poplars, rustling them. Doing this kind of work takes me away from everything else, I’m only in the moment. A good feeling.
Our Country Gentleman corn, now over 8 feet high, didn’t develop adequate stalks. I planted them too close together. As a result, as this wind has whipped them around some of the stalks, burdened now by fat ears, lose the battle with gravity and flop earthward. The corns not quite ripe, but close enough. We had one ear for lunch, a couple more now for supper.