These stories are great! Tom I'm so glad you asked this question. I have my own story, of course, but I love reading everyone else's. And so many of them -- like mine -- started when they were children. Like you!
I guess my Dad had Irises in his gardens -- purple ones, probably. They were background, and I didn't pay much attention. When I was 11 years old, we moved to a brand new sub-division -- out in the middle of cornfields and prairies. My brother and I would pack a lunch (peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches, and milk in a Ball canning jar) and take off on our bikes to explore our new surroundings. There was miles of room to do this. One day I happened upon a patch of Irises, blooming out in the middle of nowhere. But these were different from my Dad's -- these had gold tops (standards) and maroon bottoms (falls). I was enchanted. When I got home, I told my Dad about the beautiful Irises that I had discovered. He put a shovel in the trunk of his car and let me direct him to their location -- which involved quite a bit of walking from the *road* to where they were -- and he dug up a clump of them, brought them home and planted them in our yard. From then on, they were *my* Irises.
I wasn't exposed to Irises again until I was a married adult with a yard of my own -- when I happened across a Schreiner's catalog -- and was totally dumbstruck. O.M.G. I'd never seen such beautiful flowers. I placed an order for six, I think -- including one called *Suave*, whose colors were gold standards and maroon falls (sound familiar?). That was in 1976. When we moved to Kentucky in 1985, I dug up each Iris in my garden, carefully divided the rhizomes, replanted half for the new home-owner and brought the other half with me. I still have most of those Irises in my beds today and I treasure them as much as I did in 1976. I've added a few since then -- I have around 200 varieties at last count. And just ordered some from Dee on her $3.00 sale. And ran across a sale in Minnesota this week when I was visiting family there -- and purchased three new varieties. There's no end to this sickness...............
To this day -- I think about those bi-color Irises out in the middle of a prairie -- and wonder how they got there. And what magical set of circumstances led me to them -- and one of the greatest joys of my life.
