
This past weekend in Portland was glorious...cool and partially cloudy, but without rain...which made for great conditions to work outside. It's nice to both not get overheated OR soaked while working outside. We made great headway on our big project for this year (the front parking strip), but more on that in another post.

While going back and forth through the gardens, moving plants, getting materials, etc, I kept walking past the north border and parking strip (planted last year).

I kept getting passing whiffs of sweetly-scented flowers...these purple Bearded Iris, to be exact.

These are some of the flowers that we inherited when we bought this house. There were several huge, congested patches along the foundations of the house. There were layers upon layers of rhizomes...I couldn't believe they were blooming as well as they were...and some in full shade! There were far too many to replant after I had pulled them all up and divided them. Many went to friends and neighbors, many into the compost, unfortunately.

I felt bad not keep a few, however, if not for love of the plants themselves, as a little way of honoring the past of the house and garden. I kept thinking someone at some point loved them and probably looked forward to them every year (especially since there were pretty much the only flowers on the property). I also felt bad completely getting rid of them...they had managed to endure years (probably decades) of neglect to keep blooming cheerfully. I've whittle down the pile of rhizomes over the past few years (yes, they are still alive...amazingly), and have planted them randomly around the borders.

And here they are, blooming for us, their new owners, perfuming the air throughout the garden. I'm so glad I managed to save a few of them, I forget just how elegant they are in bloom. I wonder sometimes, if they weren't so easy to grow, would people covet them more. It seems in the realm of gardening, people so often are obsessed with the new, the rare and the difficult...sometimes we forget to appreciate the amazing beauty of the simple, classic and...common.

Do you have any plants, either inherited or purchased, that are common as dirt, but you still love...even in the never-ending flood of new and improved varieties?