Irides Make Me Happy

I love irides--or irises, as some would call them--more than any other flower. We have them all over our yard and they are just starting to send up their 3-foot stalks laden with blooms. As soon as they open, I'll trade out this stock shot for one of our prized blue and purple bearded beauties.

Author Katherine Swift must love irides, too. More Magazine included a quote from her book The Morville Hours on page 30 of their May 2009 edition that sings the praises of my favorite flower more eloquently than anything I've read on the subject. She writes:

Don't blink. Beneath the wall the bearded irises are in bloom, the tall upper-most petals so gauzy, so delicate, that each bloom, once opened, lasts hardly longer than a day. Look, you can almost see through them. As fleeting as a rainbow, and with the same rain-washed colours. They were named after Iris, the messenger of the gods, who as a rainbow linked heaven and earth. It's the same derivation as the iris of the human eye, the coloured membrane which separates the inner from the outer chamber. Both have the same mysterious, shifting, shimmering quality, the colours depending on the viewpoint of the observer, one colour flecked by, veined with, shot through with another.

Wonderfully said.