Tiny Leaky Hose

We ran into a pretty cool product this year, while working on the drip irrigation - 1/4" leaky hose. We'd used normal sized leaky hoses before in the garden back during the weeds-as-mulch years, and it did a really good job of keeping the plants we wanted alive while not watering plants we were not all that keen on (unfortunately, they're all native, which means that water is poison to them, I think).

We have the tiny leaky hose in the raised beds (which are sprouting in tidy little square-foot patterns all over the joint and look so....like I know what I'm doing!), and last night, I replaced a bunch of point drip nozzles in our containers with loops of the stuff. I think it's going to work much better - the point nozzles had a nasty tendency to drill out parts of the dirt unless we set the hose pressure at practically nothing, and even then, they would periodically work their way out of the pot and start watering useful spots like the sidewalk or driveway. One of them was so energetic that last night we spent time looking for a non-existent leak in an unrelated hose nearby, due to the puddles that had appeared.

The pansies are all flourishing and it hasn't got hot enough yet for them to bolt or start putting out wussy looking little flowers. Hopefully they'll keep that going for another 2 weeks or so, just until the graduation party.

For the first time ever, I have masses of bearded iris (blossoms, that is) in my garden. I had truly become convinced, after about 5 years of thriving leaves, that I'd screwed up the planting depth, but this year, they decided to stop messing with my head, I guess. Since there are only three drifts of them, they're not as spectacular as last year's snapdragons, but gratifying all the same - and they do seem to be spreading, which I'm all for.

Oh - and there are 3 or 4 corn plants that seem to have evaded the attack of the alien rabbitgophersquirrelrats and have achieved heights of 1" and more. I'm not relaxing yet, but we may get something there after all.