Dutch Iris

The other week, when I interviewed Grace Fricks for her LinkedIn profile, she told me that what gets her "up in the morning" - enthusiastic about a fresh day in the very important work she does (she heads up a non-profit microlender) - is walking outside at the crack of a spring dawn and looking for what might have come up out of the ground overnight in her garden.

I thought of that this morning, when I stepped outside with my cup of coffee for a quick look around my garden. Here is the first Dutch Iris in bloom! It and others around it sit underneath a blackberry bush that is fully in bloom at the moment.

Tara Dillard is known to say that one of the nicest aspects of a perennial garden is that even though many plants only bloom for a short period of time, "every two weeks something new opens up and gives a garden a totally new image". In my garden, the Bearded Irises are now almost all gone, so it is nice to have the Dutch variety take their places.