Irises finally!

I try to have irises at each of the places I have lived. I had a great set at my house in Wilmington, and we have tried repeatedly to grow some at this house, with a startling lack of success until this year.

One set that is finally blooming at the end of the driveway was to replace two other attempts that yielded leaves and then nothing the next year. Then we waited one leaf-only year for this one to produce a ton of iris flowers, some of which are on stalks almost four feet tall. I wish I knew what caused the success, perhaps it is just patience.

We planted another set closer to the house. These irises are not as tall, but are as bountiful with blooms.



I never realized until taking these closeup pictures that an iris "flower" appears to made of three flowers in a triangle, and that the center of the triangle is not the flower part, it is the fuzzy triangle corners that have the important flower "parts" so to speak. My amateur naturalism and horticulture are starting to pay dividends with new knowledge for me.