Our Irises This Year

With so much rain all year our irises have come in like gangbusters. I really hadn’t looked at them for a couple of weeks when they seemed to be close, very close to opening but never did. I had a birthday last weekend and spent a couple of days having fun instead between crying jags about my family not being here with me. I do love John’s brother and sister who live within an hour or so but none of my children were here since they’re so far away and the same goes for my sisters in California. So John did his best to perk me up and took me out for a fun lunch and a walk around somebody else’s gigantic grounds that were rather sensational. That certainly took my mind off my own mood and I decided to just let all my pressing jobs and worries lie dormant for the weekend.

But after several more days of just really lazing around like a dodo I got my moxie back for my projects and eventually the bad weather cleared yet again and I took big walks around our gardens to see what needed doing. Although I sat outside a couple of times it wasn’t in the same area as the irises and I didn’t walk past them until a couple of days ago when all I saw were masses of lilac and lavender blooms with a hint of orange-yellow centers and a touch of purple. There were at least three times as many this year as last and we hadn’t even dug them up to divide them. Since they were all blooming in unison it really packed a punch. 

So with my emotional issues calmed down a tad, I took a few shots of these luscious beauties. I always liked irises when I was younger but never had them at my houses in America. Once we moved to New Zealand though I did add them to my historic home and my vineyard estate and the house we lived in on top of the hill in Up Above Down Under. When we moved here to The House of Cluck-Cluck I dug up those flowers (since I’d put them in) and transplanted them in a subtle boggy site here, a little off the lawn, where they thrived but weren’t obvious to the passerby. So my dear old matey moved them secretly without telling me to his ‘area’, next to the first fishpond he designed and created. Then he added a seating area and eventually he spilled the beans and confessed that he’d pinched the plants from me. By that time I didn’t care if he moved them since they were more admired where he put them than where I sort of hid them from view. And he has worried over them and babied them since.  Actually we’ve both cared for them, weeded around them and basically have a sort of co ownership truce. And they look really lovely around the pond along with the gladioli (he also pilfered from one of my other areas) that bloom later in the season, well after the irises are finished. There’s certainly some kind of mystique about irises that even Vincent Van Gogh and Claude Monet found rather enchanting too. So we’re in very good company.