INDIANAPOLIS —
My son surprised me with a gift a week or so ago. He may be headed for a life in business suits and appointments and lunches with clients, but for now he mows grass and pulls weeds and trims shrubs to make ends meet. Among other lawns, he mows our church yard, the cemetery included.
The gift was a battered green bucket stuffed with irises that he had dug out around a graveyard plot. I had asked him to do it for me when he had the chance. He knows I love the flowers, and since I didn’t have the particular shade of pale yellow that grew near the church’s woods, and since there were so many of them, I asked that he bring me a few starts.
The soil-less flowers had already drooped in the warmth of the afternoon, and he wondered if he had gotten enough of their roots for us to even hope they had a chance to grow.
“Irises will grow if you have just a little of this bulb with them,” I told Evan as I pointed to the rhizome, as if I were a horticulturalist doing a noontime news segment. Truth be known, I only took botany in high school, but still hoped to impress my boy, who knew I’d have a story to tell whether he wanted to hear it or not.
“Why, I’ve thrown iris starts that were left after thinning out old beds and have seen them grow in our compost pile, even in old fall leaves,” I told him.
Since my day was done, and I wore clean clothes and recently scrubbed hands — and I didn’t want to ask him to take his favor a step further and dig out a scruffy flower bed in our front yard and transplant my new starts there — I whipped our beat-up wheelbarrow from behind the barn, dumped the flowers into it, dropped a half-bag of topsoil onto them, emptied a quarter of a watering can on the mess, and headed in for supper.
“They’ll be fine until I get to them tomorrow evening,” I told him, and he followed me in to do a little scrubbing on his own grunginess.
Irises have a long history. The most persistent story is that the name comes from the Greek word for “rainbow,” and it was the goddess Iris who acted as the go-between for heaven and Earth, a sort of messenger service for the gods. In those ancient times, it is said that purple irises — the most common color — were placed on the graves of women to summon Iris so she could help them find their way to the afterlife.
Another theory is that the flower’s name was derived from the word “eirein,” which means “to speak,” but that legend is much less glamorous and rarely recalled.
The unique shape and hardiness of the flower have made it even more popular through the ages. The Egyptians were captivated by irises and many paintings and drawings of them have been found in archeological digs. By the Middle Ages, the French seemed to take up the cause, eventually linking the flower to the monarchy, and the fleur-de-lis was born.
Today, the flower’s rhizome — a fancy word for rootstalk — is still used for such things as perfumes and herbal medicines, fixatives in nature-lovers’ toothpaste, and even as flavoring or coloring in some brands of gin. Oil squeezed from irises has even been used for aromatherapy.
I have grown irises around my place since it became my place nearly 30 years ago. Some of the first flowers I brought here were the irises that came from my mom’s flowerbeds a few miles away. They were mostly purple or lavender, although one of my favorite stands today is a gorgeous deep yellow with a falls — that’s the tongue-like petal that hangs down toward the stem of the plant — that is an even darker burgundy. Perhaps my favorite of all my irises are a smaller, deep blue-purple variety that is often called a Japanese iris. They grow not far from my door, small and delicate and orchid-like.
As you might suspect, there are many varieties of irises — more than 200, in fact. They are, of course, cultivated and bred and bought and sold, but they can also be commonly found along river banks and in meadows and on mountain slopes as far away as Europe and the Middle East, even in Africa and in Asia.
Wayne McClintock knows irises well. I consider Wayne, and his wife, Betty, my neighbors, since they live close to my school and along the way to church, and just four miles or so down my road. They grow and sell irises; in fact, their big yard right now is at its peak in an explosion of colors. Some of my flowers were culled from his neatly kept beds.
Wayne is a laughing, friendly man. He says of his irises, “There are just so many colors, and they’re low maintenance. I have to get on my hands and knees to pull a few weeds, but for most part, they’re easy to grow. They’re just my thing, I guess.”
“The older varieties have the best scents,” Wayne adds. Some of the old purples and reds have a scent of grapes. Some evenings, my wife and me, we walk up and down the rows and talk and smell ’em. We enjoy it; they’re relaxing. We see a lot of cars drive past and slow way down. We know they’re lookin’. I’ve even thought of putting a bench out there to just sit and look.”
I know that many irises have sad names, for they are a popular graveyard decoration. There are “White Cemetery” and “Mourning” irises, but there are also the “Nazareth Iris,” and the “Harlequin Blue Flag,” the “Sierra,” and the “Rabbit Ear,” too.
Two Sundays ago, I found myself standing at my mom’s grave; it was Mother’s Day, and I had brought her a handful of purple irises I had just clipped from a creek-stone bed near my house. It has become a tradition of sorts for me to do so because she loved the flowers — she told me so several times. In fact, I am certain that those flowers came from starts I brought from our home place.
As I set the already wilting blooms on Mom’s stone, I knew she needed no goddess, no bouquet of flowers, to help her find her way to the afterlife, for irises are fleeting things, like our lives.
If they teach me anything with their grand simplicity, it’s that we need to enjoy and cherish them while they’re here.
Mike Lunsford can be reached by e-mail at hickory913@aol.com, or by regular mail c/o the Tribune-Star at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Go to his Web page at www.mikelunsford.com for availability of his books and updates about speaking and signing opportunities.
Mike Lunsford
The Off Season: Irises possess all the colors of the rainbow
- Mike Lunsford
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Feeding time at the homestead draws a host of new guests
I stepped outside into the warmth of an unusually mild early March morning last week to do what I always do just before I grab my briefcase and book bag and lunch bag and head off to work. It’s nearly always dark when I leave, even as the sun gets up earlier and earlier in the late winter, so I often go about the business of feeding our cats with porch lights on and a flashlight in hand.
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