The Diminishing Irises

When my mother moved out of her house she needed a piece of land to store her magnificent dark purple Irises. She had no room in the yard of her new villa. She brought them carefully out to my house and we planted them in my garden.

These flowers were the offspring of Irises from my grandmother’s flower garden (my mother’s mother) – which very likely came to her as the offspring of her mother’s irises (my great grandmother).  . . . and so on. Who even knows where they came from in the first place? The Mayflower? For all these years I have had a family history exhibit in my back yard.

During the past month I have noticed that my Iris bed is diminishing. In fact it has almost disappeared. And that is shocking because Irises like to grow, expand, move out and take over – it is not normal for them to disappear.

Since my discovery I have watched about a thousand videos, gone to all sorts of web sites. I have worked the soil, tried to transplant them and cut back the surrounding shrubbery. I have even hunted for squirrels and rabbits. Basically I have done everything except beat myself with a stick because I feel dreadful. My grandma used to chase birds away from her gardens with a BB gun. I have broken a great multigenerational trust!

I finally got up the courage to tell my mother that she had better be searching for someone else’s dirt if she wants any hope of saving Great Grandma’s Irises. We are down to the last one.  Imagine my surprise when she replied without even a trace of emotion,

“Oh,  I’ll just get some more bulbs from my brother Joe.”

All this time I have believed that I was the Grand Protector of some precious DNA – the keeper of a sacred trust. Turns out - I am a back up plan. Oh Brother!