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german iris

A few years ago I used to walk by a bulb border every day. Somebody had planted them in layers on the narrow strip between the sidewalk and the road and left them to their own devices to provide a continuous display of color from early April through the end of July.

I have to confess I was a little jealous of this ‘set it and forget it’ makeshift garden that switched from daffodils to tulips, irises and day-lilies with an effortless and simply shameless excess of flowers.

The irises most of all got to me. They bloomed in flower carpets and came in almost every color imaginable, absolutely stunning in large displays.
Inspired by this explosion of bloom I went out and got quite a few more iris bulbs for my garden, but so far I haven’t seen flowers from them. Maybe they need some time to get established, I’m patient. They have the full sunshine, they have the same impossible clay the miracle bulb patch is growing in, so, any moment now, right?

The beauty in the picture is a much older German iris, a veteran of the garden, which indeed blooms profusely in May, even in part shade, and whose bulb split several times to populate a few other flower beds.

I was looking through a few winter photos of the back yard and lo and behold, there was the iris foliage, spearheading valiantly through the snow and the dried up seed heads from last fall. Who knows, maybe this year is their year.

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