80AcresOnline

Despite the way their roots attack the pumps, we plant water iris in the larger permanent water features: they offer desirable habitat for odonates  above water, and shelter for tadpoles, red-lined ribbon snakes, and other aquatic critters below the water surface.  And though the “land” iris isn’t native here, I enjoy the older varieties that still mark out house-sites and yards in fields where a homesteader’s house has long vanished.

This robust yellow water iris multiples quickly and once more we need to yank about half of it out of the big pond–but it’s attracted hummingbirds and butterflies as well as the odes that perch on it and (some of them) use the stems to lay their eggs in.

Read the rest of this entry »