Longfellow's Yellow

Delicate iris...fair among the fairest.
(Click picture to enlarge)

"Thou art the Iris, fair among the fairest,
Who, armed with golden rod
And winged with the celestial azure, bearest
The message of some God."
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Iris

The iris bloomed this year. My mother and grandmother planted the original bulbs in the flowerbed of their home years ago. Each spring they spread and bloomed, becoming thicker. Each year the roots were separated and plants placed further along in the flowerbed until... the entire back corner of the house was surrounded by these big delicate blooms. The flowers were so thick and crowded that the blooms began to suffer, but no amount of thinning prevented their return to the same thickness of the previous year.

In 2008, we sold their house and before closing, I dug up several dishpans of these iris. We live on the edge of a preserve... what I would call swampy wetland. The bamboo-like cane and a variety of wild vines encroach on the free space behind the fence. My interpretation of the "free space" is that it is not our property but we have to maintain it anyway. So I tried to till up a bit of the hard black clay and mix it with sand and soil and here, just at the edge of the preserve, I transplanted some of these iris. We didn't know if they would take hold or die. But here are the results... big, lush blooms just as before.

Now, if I can only find a small tiller and get the rest of them out of the plastic dishpans and into the ground before they multiply too much to separate the roots again. Next year I might have a whole line of defense against that wild stuff in the preserve!

This will be my entry for Mellow Yellow Monday and Macro Monday. I love the little tongue of papillae the iris always have, so that is my macro shot.

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