Irises: Nature's Living Rainbows

Iris needlepoint by Annake

This has been a difficult time for Annake’s Garden, outdoors as well with staying indoors because of the pandemic. We have lost a beautiful 50-year old crab-apple tree. The late freezes have destroyed this year's daffodils and hyacinths and we are concerned about our fruit trees, grapevines, berries, rosebushes and other plants.  It is evident that we will not be able to work the Farmers' Markets the way we have done for the past several years. The art and craft shows will likely be canceled. Annake's Garden will definitely be starting over and much of that cannot be done until as late as this time next year. That is why I am so looking forward to the irises. They warm my heart.

Irises, which my mother used to call "poor man's orchids", are my favorite flowers. I would rather have an iris in a vase than an orchid pinned on my shoulder any day. Even my favorite perfume is Iris Noir, or "Black Iris". We have three versions of ‘black' irises here in the garden, one of which is truly black. Some of our favorites will be used to illustrate this post.

Rainbow (Public Domain photo)

In Greek mythology, Iris was the goddess of the rainbow. Her name means rainbow. Her father was a minor sea god and her mother was a cloud nymph. Iris was the messenger of the gods. The rainbow was a bridge that she used to carry messages back and forth. She was portrayed as a pretty girl with golden wings, a messenger's rod (sometimes also winged), and winged slippers. She is sometimes shown with a pitcher, and was believed to refill the clouds with water from the sea. She was always shown as good and helpful. We use her name in the word "iridescent", meaning giving off rainbow reflections, like butterfly wings and hummingbird feathers  — and iris petals.

Iris needlepoint in progress

I use irises frequently in needle arts. Now I am going to show you several examples of irises in those arts, while demonstrating the use of various pattern-making techniques that you can use at home — and you can even design your own patterns. Let's start with a charted pattern, which will probably be the one most familiar to you. You can download it here.

This is a charted iris that can be done in counted cross-stitch on checked gingham, monks' cloth, or Aida cloth in any size you like. It can be done in tent stitch on plastic canvas, conventional needlepoint canvas, quickpoint canvas or rug canvas. If you think of each square as a patchwork square, it could become a quilt. If each square were a ceramic tile, you could make a back-splash for a kitchen or bathroom sink..It is designed to be done as a bi-colored iris, but can also be done in a solid color. In fact, it can be done in any colors you like — even imaginary ones.  If you are doing a bi-colored iris, the standards should be in a light color, the falls in a dark color, the beards in yellow or orange and the stem, of course, in green.

Irises, latch hooked wall hanging

There are some things to remember when you work from a charted pattern. Each square on the chart represents a single stitch. Count the squares horizontally very carefully. The white squares on the pattern represent the background color. if you are going to use one. Do the same thing with the vertical rows. Make sure your canvas or fabric is going to be big enough for the finished picture, plus some space for turning over to hem or turning under around a cardboard spacer for framing, turning under for backing a rug, etc.  It is much better to have to trim off some fabric when you have finished the pattern than to find out at the last minute that you don't have enough background for all your work.

The next possible problem is that of losing your place in the pattern and working the wrong row.  There are a couple of simple techniques and devices to help you with this problem. It is certainly important to keep track of the line in the chart that corresponds with the line of stitches you are working, as well as to keep an accurate count of the number of stitches you have completed. Otherwise, your finished project may not look very much like the chart! It is a good idea to keep the chart on a flat surface where it is easy to see all of it from your working position. I use a clipboard to hold mine in place. I keep a pencil with it. If I'm interrupted or have to be away from my work for any length of time, I make a small pencil mark by my last completed stitch.

If you are primarily losing the horizontal line in the chart and are not concerned with losing count of your stitches, the simplest solution is to place a 12-inch ruler with its top edge just under the chart line you are following. If you need to add weight to the ruler to keep it in place, glue a couple of coins to the underneath side of the ruler, near the ends.

For an easy-to-make tool to mark both the horizontal and the vertical lines of your chart, cut two pieces of stiff cardboard about 2 inches (5 cm) wide and 6 inches (15 cm) long. Staple or glue them together so that they form an L-shape. Place the L on the chart so that the bottom part of the L is directly below the horizontal line of the chart that you are following, and the upright part of the L is just behind the first stitch you are going to count. Mentally remind yourself to move the upright part of the L every 5 or 10 stitches you complete. This takes some practice, but will soon become automatic. Slide the bottom of the L up (if you are working from the bottom of the chart) or down (if you are working from the top) one space at the end of every completed row of stitches.

Tracing pattern on canvas

The next type of pattern is one that you can make for yourself. Draw or trace your pattern on lightweight white paper. Tape it, design side toward you, on a sunny windowpane. Tape you canvas or a thin white fabric on the pane so that it overlaps the drawing.  Trace the design. Carefully re-trace the design onto the canvas or fabric. I use pencil on fabric because it will wash out. If you like, you can color the design lightly later with permanent markers that will not run. A semi-transparent fabric like organdy is excellent for this. Even if you don't embroider the design, you can trim the fabric away from the edges of the hoop and hang it in a sunny window. We call those "Window Wonders".

I use permanent marker on canvas because the stitches will cover it, as you can see in the picture on the right.

I carefully wipe off any excess ink, as you can see me doing in the photo on the left.





The kind of needlework I am going to do on this pattern I call "stained-glass stitchery". I'm going to pause here and show you the steps I used to work the pattern of an iris in this technique.

1) Stitched iris  2) Background 'panes' added  3) All sections backstitched in black

Sweatshirt with needlework

Working an iris design on a dark sweatshirt requires a different technique.  First I draw the parts of my design on tracing paper or a good grade of tissue paper. I pin the pattern in place on the sweatshirt, being careful not to pin the front and back of the shirt together. Then I thread an 18 inch piece of white yarn, floss, or crochet cotton into a sharp-pointed needles. Working from the inside of the sweatshirt, I back-stitch all around the lines in the drawing. You cans see that I have started doing that in the picture below, on the left. The completed design outline is in the middle picture.  When the complete design has been stitched, I pull the paper away gently. A pair of small tweezers is good to have to pick out any tiny pieces of paper caught in the stitches. The embroidery work is shown in progress in the picture on the right. Once all the embroidery has been done, filling in the sections of the design, you can snip out the pieces of white yarn.  Or you can simply work over them as you fill in the sections of the design.

There is another kind of pattern transfer — hot-iron transfer. However, it must be done with a special kind of pencil. With the shops likely to carry such a pencil closed and you readers at home, perhaps it is best to leave that one for another day.

Assisi-style iris on canvas

This iris pattern represents an embroidery style called Assisi embroidery. I did this in needlepoint on canvas for a quick demonstration, but if you are doing authentic Assisi embroidery, you would do the stitches in cross-stitch and leave the iris petals empty so that the background fabric shows through. What appears as background here, along with the features of the iris which are  given are done in cross-stitch. I later filled in the iris with additional needlepoint so it could be framed.

Finished iris needlepoint

Graphing a needle arts chart

If you want to make your own graph patterns like the one we started with at the beginning of this article, you will need quarter-inch graph paper, erasable colored pencils, a small pencil sharpener, a good eraser (kneadable ones are the best), plain paper to draw your design, and a hard surface to work on (a clipboard will do if you don't have table space). Curved outlines will need to be "square off". This is easiest to do with a counted cross-stitch design, so I would recommend that you start with one of those. You can use half cross-stitches, either upper left to lower right corners of the square or upper right to lower left corners. I like to back-stitch around the major parts of a cross-stitch design to make them stand out. If you are doing that on your pattern, indicate it with solid lines.

We are going to leave you with a collection of J.D.'s favorite iris photos.

Enjoy,

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Arbor Day 2020

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See more info at end of this post.

Aspens  (photo by J.D.)

National Arbor Day is celebrated on the last Friday in April in the United States, where the idea was first proposed by Julius Sterling Morton in the 1870's. Morton was a Nebraska newspaper editor, a very successful farmer, and a statesman. He was very respected as an agriculturist. Morton loved trees, but Nebraska was not really rich in native trees, so he planted many trees on his estate. He came up with the idea for an Arbor Celebration and got the backing of other influential people. The first Arbor Day was celebrated in Nebraska on April 10, 1872. Morton's followers planted an estimated one million trees in Nebraska.

"Other holidays repose upon the past; Arbor Day proposes for the future."

J. Sterling Morton

The day became a Nebraska state holiday in 1885, the date changed to April 22 to honor Morton’s birthday. By the 1920's, each state had also passed a law establishing a state Arbor Day. These are celebrated on different days in each state. Trees are planted for these celebrations, so the dates depend on the climate in each state. In 1970, President Richard Nixon proclaimed a national Arbor Day on the last Friday of April each year. This year National Arbor Day falls on April 24th. Morton's former estate and lodge are now Arbor Lodge State Historical Park. Nebraska's state tree is the Cottonwood.

Blue spruce

All of the states in the United States have a State Tree (some have more than one).  In addition to State Trees, the U.S. National Tree is the mighty Oak and the District of Columbia claims the Scarlet Oak. Our Colorado's State Tree is the Colorado Blue Spruce.

What Is Deforestation?

Deforestation is the cutting down of forests to make way for farmland, pastureland, building cities, logging for lumber, and mining. It also happens when fires in the forest get out of control, or when there is an infestation of insects or diseases from some other part of the world for which the forest has no immunity.

Here are some disturbing facts about deforestation:

• Forests currently cover about 30% of the land, but scientists fear that 100 years from now there will be none left!
• One and a half acres of forest worldwide is cut down every second!
• That means 90 acres are cut down every minute. That's 20 football fields! Multiply that 90 acres by 60 and you get 5,400 acres per hour. Multiply that number by 24 to see how much forest is lost every day
  
• Deforestation contributes heavily to excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That is because trees absorb carbon dioxide to make their food and to grow. In return, they produce oxygen and release it into the air. Carbon dioxide is a dangerous "greenhouse gas" and adding it to the atmosphere raises temperatures worldwide. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the air today is higher than it has been in 3 million years.
  
• Trees help to clear the air of pollution. People in large cities were wearing masks outdoors to protect themselves from pollution for years before the coronavirus epidemics began.
• Deforestation also contributes to soil erosion because tree roots keep soil from eroding. Loss of trees has made floods more devastating because so much topsoil is washed away. That also means that substances like fertilizer are washed into coastal waters, poisoning ocean plants and animals.

  

  Endangered lowland gorilla, photo by J.J.

• The majority of Earth's endangered animals live wholly or partially in forests.
• The tropical rain forests were once called "the lungs of the Earth" because of all the carbon dioxide they kept out of the atmosphere and all of the oxygen they produced. But rain forests are disappearing faster than other forests.
• Many life-saving medicines, including cancer-fighting drugs, have come from species found in rain forests. Many more remain to be found — if they don't disappear before they are discovered. As many as 28,000 species will disappear at current rates worldwide by the year 2045.

  

  "And a Corby in a Pine Tree",  by J.J.

• Bird species here in North America are declining in alarming numbers. That means both numbers of birds and numbers of bird species.  Climate change is driving species to find cooler climates in order to survive. That may mean moving further north on the globe or moving to ever higher, cooler elevations. In either case, they may find these new habitats don't have good supplies of their natural foods. They may not find sufficient nesting materials to build nests that protect their eggs and baby birds. They may run into new predators. The fact that they have left their natural habitats may well mean that those habitats will suffer from increases in the populations of harmful insects and their larvae. We need to preserve existing trees and replant ones that have been lost.

 

What are some things that trees do for us besides affect air quality and climate change?

Do you like to put maple syrup on your pancakes and waffles? Maple syrup is made from the sap of sugar maple trees in the Spring during a time when the trees have come out of their winter dormancy and started producing fresh sap to carry nutrients throughout the tree. Read the labels carefully; there are a lot of "maple-flavored' syrups out there which cannot compare with the real thing!

Many of the fruits that we eat grow on trees. That is something you can teach small children when you serve any of these fresh, canned, or frozen: apple, apricot, avocado, cherry, date, fig, kumquat, lemon, lime, mango, olive, orange, papaya, peach, pear, plum, quince, tangelo, tangerine. Many other fruits are available and popular in other parts of the world.

The same thing is true of nuts, which are the seeds of many trees. These include: almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, chestnuts, coconuts, hickory nuts, macadamia nuts, pecans, pinon and other pine nuts, and walnuts (both black and English).  But the list does not contain peanuts, which are not nuts and don't grow on trees. Coconuts and almonds produce a good substitute for milk that lasts much longer in the refrigerator than cow's milk.

As I mentioned before, many medicines have been derived from trees and tree products, particularly those from the rain forests.

A major use of cut trees is for lumber and plywood.  Woods with particularly nice colors and/or patterns are used for furniture and decorative moldings. Most of the latter are hardwoods, rather than the softer evergreens. If you have some of these, take good care of them. They will become increasingly rare and far more expensive.

What can we do about some of these problems?

Forest's Edge, photo by J.J.

The obvious answers are 1) cause fewer trees to be cut down and 2) plant new trees. Let's look at both of those activities. A huge amount of wood is used to make paper. That is something we can do something about. Going paperless as much as possible can help. Recycling paper will definitely help.

Cloth shopping bags

Using cloth shopping bags and not choosing to buy items with a lot of unnecessary packaging are large steps in the right direction.

Try to set up a book and magazine exchange with friends and don't duplicate subscriptions. Let the children draw and color on the backs of paper that is printed on one side only.  Ask companies that send unwanted catalogs to you to remove your name from their mailing lists. Encourage your children to make art and craft projects with paper and cardboard.  Reuse cardboard boxes for mailing or compact storage. Crumpled or shredded paper is better packing material from an environmental standpoint than "packing peanuts" or plastic airbags.  Use greeting cards and pretty wrapping paper again for decoupage and collage projects.

Planting a tree

Now, about planting trees.  The best trees to plant are those which are native to your area or which have been bred to do well in your soil, water, and climate conditions.  Check out your state tree, for example. Our state tree is the Colorado blue spruce and it is available here — baby ones are even free from the Arbor Day Foundation.  But you might want something that is more multi-purpose. Consider fruit trees. They don't take up as much space as shade trees, they grow fast, they provide you with valuable food, and the leftovers will make birds and squirrels happy.  In either case, read planting and care directions carefully and follow them.  You can also volunteer to plant trees in state and national parks or in areas where trees have been destroyed by wildfires or flash floods.  Check with the authorities about opportunities and regulations.

Here are some other things you can do:

1. Learn about prospective legislation that involves forests, parks and other public lands. Make your opinions clear and vote on the side of conservation and reclamation.
2. Vote for candidates for office who share your views. Talk to someone on your town or city council or attend some of their meetings. Ask questions about the possibilities for conservation and reclamation locally and make suggestions for improvements where possible.
3. Learn more about trees — they can be fascinating.
4. Teach your children to love and respect trees.
5. Don't carve your initials or words into tree bark. It can damage the growing layers underneath and let in harmful insects or diseases that will eventually kill the tree.
6. Watch an episode of Pete Nelson's Treehouse Masters on the Animal Channel™. Pete's a man who doesn't hesitate to hug a tree! See how carefully the crew cuts floors and decks so the trees can move naturally in the winds common to their environment. Those trees are meant to live for many decades.
7. If you cannot plant a tree,  give a donation to a group replanting areas ravaged by fires, floods, tornadoes or avalanches. Bring back the trees.

For more about trees, check our Extras page for:
Teachable Moments: Trees for Children
Teachable Moments: Trees for "Tweens" (Ages 9 to 12)

*** Our  "Extras"  page (the last tab on the top menu) has PDF files of extra materials related to the subjects in our blog posts, mostly aimed towards young people, their parents and teachers. Due to the current pandemic resrictions, we intend to expand this section greatly over the next two months. Check back every week for new files.

J.D., Annake's Garden Gnome

 This post by Annake's Garden is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.