White Irises From A Stranger

On my way back and forth to my parent’s house, I used to drive by a yard that had a small bed of white irises, an old-fashioned, tall variety, with large, white-as-snow, well-formed flowers. I longed to see some of them in my yard, and I wanted to give that stock a better chance to continue in the world by planting some in a second location, in my yard. So I gathered my nerve, wrote a note with my phone number saying that I would be happy to trade a white iris rhizome for any of the dozen or so varieties of iris that I had in my yard, and I tucked the note in the mailbox of the home of the white irises. No one called me so after a few weeks I made myself forget the idea. Then about a month later, a bucket of beautiful white irises, several large plants, appeared on my doorstep. I immediately planted them with gratitude. They doubled in volume every year thereafter. What a treasure! A few years ago a woman driving in the steady stream of traffic past my house and consequently past my iris beds, leaned out of her window to yell to my irises, “Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.” It was delightful, delightful, delightful.

Caption: White Irises From A Stranger by Annmarie Throckmorton, 2015.