'House Guest'

It is the season for guest irises for future iris meetings.  While you can see this year's requests in the Spring Irises Bulletin, pages 44-48, here is a quick summary of them.  You can also see the same table with the event, type of irises, dates to receive the irises, and email for contacts where available on this page.

'Join In'

At the Portland Convention, the Board approved increasing the print memberships starting October 1, 2015 as follows:

Annual Single $30
Annual Dual $35
Triennial Single $70
Triennial Dual $85
Overseas Annual Single $35
Overseas Annual Dual $40
Overseas Triennial Single $75
Overseas Triennial Dual $90
Youth W/o Bulletin $8
Youth with Bulletin $12

The current rates will still be in effect until then and you can learn about the membership options here.  You can renew or upgrade your membership online from this page.

'Judge Mac'

The iris awards are coming soon!  After seeing all the irises, the judges will be voting.  Judges, the deadline for voting online or mailing your ballot is August 1st.  And if mailed, postmarked by August 1st (to get credit for voting) and received by August 10th to be included in the official totals.  Voting online?  Just go to this link and follow your directions.  Questions or problems - email AISVotes@VoteIrises.org for answers.

One more note for judges, it is also activity report season.  Send them to your Regional Judges Training Chair.  Due dates may vary by Region.

Everyone, you can see the draft ballot (PDF) here (judges have the official ballot with the same choices).  If you would like to see previous winners, this page has lists for 1999-2014.

Interested in becoming a judge?  Contact your Regional Judges Training Chair to learn how.

'Free Sample'

A recent request for the Marketing Handbook reminded me to mention it again.  This is a guide to help your Club, Region, or Section prepared by the PR and Marketing Committee.  You can find it on the AIS website here (PDF). 

This is the 2012 version, an eternity ago in Internet time.  So we will be updating it!  New things that we will be adding include our Voucher Program for new members, the posters Andi Rivarola has been creating, success stories and tips from some of the clubs, and News & Notes.

There is a page on the Iris Encyclopedia pointing to all of these as well.  Please add your suggestions for other items to include there or email them to aismprcommittee@gmail.com or let any members of the committee know.  Has your club tried something you would like to share?   Please let us know. Thank you for your help.

'Horned Rubyfalls'

 

One of the happenings at the Portland Convention was the approval of the Novelty Iris Society as an AIS Section.  Congratulations to Bonnie Nichols and everyone who has been working to make this happen for the last year and more!  You can learn more in their announcement (PDF).  Including details on how you can become a member.

You can learn more about novelty irises from Bonnie Nichols' presentation Novelty Bearded Irises and Space Age Irises judges training from the link on this page.  (Note that the presentation is 18 MB.)  The Iris Encyclopedia also has a number of types of novelty irises.  Whether it is various foliage, shapes, sizes, horns, creped, or other unusual features, learn and see more beginning here. 

 

Creating this jigsaw puzzle helped me identify an iris.  The iris came from an iris show a couple of years ago with a name that we could not quite read.  It was 'Capricious' something, our guesses at the time were Wandies, Dandies.  I had put Capricious on the label and had forgotten there was more to the name.  So, in comparing this puzzle photo to 'Capricious' in the Iris Encyclopedia, the description and images did not quite match my photo.  Searching for any titles containing capricious found 'Capricious Candles' (duh) which does match.  I should have known the Iris Wiki would come through!

You can see the photo that solved it for me in the jigsaw.  Here are the standard version jigsaw and the harder version jigsaw for your enjoyment.