I remember from my childhood that my grandmother ALWAYS had irises. They were always just your run of the mill purple irises, but wherever she lived, a few went with her. When she lost her legs to poor circulation and ended up in a wheelchair, she had to move into an apartment that was handicap accessible. She got the ground floor apartment, of course, and guess what the first thing was that my mom did? She planted Grandma some irises just outside her patio door. But I'm pretty sure they were yellow. Not sure how Grandma felt about that. Anyway, my mom always loved irises, as well. And again, they were most always purple. As a kid, and even as a young adult, I could never figure out why they loved them so much. My mom swore they smelled amazing. I thought they stunk. Mom always said, "Oh, your grandma would LOVE that!" whenever we passed them on the road. I never could figure out why.
Fast forward many, many years (I'm 40 now). Where my husband and I live now, we have to drive past a certain property multiple times a day. This particular property had some of the most amazing irises I'd ever seen. And every single time I drove past, I'd think to myself, "God, Mom and Grandma would LOVE those!" I swore to myself that if the property owner ever decided to sell any, I'd have to stop by and get a few, just for Grandma. Well, lo and behold, last summer, I saw a sign in the lady's yard that said "Irises and daffodils for sale". I screeched to a stop in the middle of the street, threw it into reverse and pulled into her yard (I was SUPPOSED to be going to the grocery store that's five minutes from my house). It turned out that the lady who lived there had decided to sell the property to the city, who had been after her to sell it for many, many years. But she wasn't willing to let the city plow under her beloved irises, so she was selling them all off before the property changed hands. She also happened to be the secretary of the Greater St. Louis Iris Society for many years. We ended up having a very lengthy conversation that evening (I actually forgot to even GO to the grocery store, much to my husband's dismay), and instead of getting 'a few for Grandma', I bought about 60 of them from her at $2.00 a rhizome. I came home with paper grocery bags full of rhizomes and dirt instead of groceries that night! Over the next few weeks, as she continued digging, I stopped several more times, and bought more and more and more.... All in all I think I bought nearly a hundred iris rhizomes from her. I ended up giving a lot of them to my mom and my sister-in-law, because I knew they'd love them. The best part is that they were ALL labeled.
My husband and I own a small property in Southeast Missouri, that we keep for weekend recreation, fishing, swimming, hunting etc.. We have it mainly so that our suburban children will have a place to go run barefoot through the grass, swim in the pond and just be happy, filthy kids. But now, it's turned into something else for me. I'm a nerd at heart, so I immediately got online and did tons of research on EXACTLY what irises liked and needed to thrive. I brutally ripped out a raised bed of perennials (that looked entirely like weeds) that the previous owner had planted, and that was the start of my first iris bed.
This summer, I joined the Greater St. Louis Iris Society myself, and became their social media guru, creating a Facebook page for them. I also just happened to attend the meeting where they auctioned off rhizomes from the Missouri Botanical Garden annual dig and cleanup. If you've ever been to MoBot, you know they have an amazing iris garden! Since I didn't have any room down at our farm for these new acquisitions, I decided I needed to put an iris bed in here at home. This "little iris bed" quickly exploded into a big raised bed at the back edge of our yard that is about 35' long by 5' wide. And because I had so much room, I decided I needed to place some orders with Schreiner's and Commanche Acres, to add to my new collection. I ended up with extras. So I took them down to the farm. Now, I THINK that I have about 80 irises down at the farm and 65 to 70 here. A couple are duplicates, but mostly they're all different.
I guess you could say that my sentimental thoughts about Mom and Grandma loving irises so much put me down a path that I never would have expected. But I've discovered that it makes my soul happy. So I'm going to keep on walking down that path and become a certifiable crazy iris lady.
