Iris surprise

This is a picture of my latest iris surprise. I say surprise because I didn't know I had one plant this color, now I find I have not one but, three plants like this. The photo does not truly do it justice. It is a deep purplish blue. The lower petals are almost black. I tried several times today to get a better photo, but we have a light breeze blowing. It was hard to catch the flower when the wind was not blowing.

My iris garden is special to me and my husband. Most of the bulbs came from either my Mom or his Mom. Both have passed on, so this is a living memorial to them both. Every year it seems like we discover a new color we didn't know we had.

The flowers have survived many transplantings in the past few years. The ones from my Mom started in Iowa. I got the bulbs right after Mom died. They had been planted in a drainage ditch. The tops had been mown so often that the bulbs had shriveled into hard, dry, withered pieces. I was not even sure they would grow. I was living in Illinois at the time. I planted the bulbs in my front yard. The next spring, they were joined by bulbs from my husband's Mom. We drove to Wisconsin, dug them up, and planted them in the front yard in Illinois. Now we have them at our home in Colorado.