The irises caught my eye this morning – there, under the old hackberry tree with its thick, sheltering arms. There, next to St. Francis of Assisi – a wooden version, a bird-feeding version, that reminds me daily of the spirit of this man who refused to see things the way most people did. As I walked by on my way back from feeding the cats at the barn, I touched his arm, as I often do, and that’s when I realized I needed to get closer to the irises.
I bent down to really notice them – to look at them in detail. They were so beautiful, I went in the house and got the camera and photographed them. The photograph didn’t capture their exquisite life; I needed to look more deeply. I returned to the house for pencil and journal.
I don’t even know how to draw something as exquisite and complex as an iris. My primitive drawing is marked with lines going out to descriptive paragraphs that describe the flower with words. Still, despite my inadequacies as an artist, the effort of drawing the flower is the important thing. It helped me see it.
The iris has three layers of three sets of petals. The lower petals, the darkest purple, hang down like tongues. These petals have white veins toward the center and short, bright yellow hair in the center of the tongues.
The inner three petals are small, tender, pale lavender and they curl up on the ends. Bending over the top toward each other are three more petals, a mid-shade of purple that protect the three inner, paler petals.
The iris smells sweet, and is sweet – a soft purple, protective canopy for the tenderness inside.
And so I sit beside the iris, here under the hackberry, with its brand new green leaves, full and fresh. This strong, sheltering tree is here because after World War II, when my father was cleaning up the farm with his bulldozer, he noticed this sapling and decided it was in a pretty good spot, there at the northwest corner of the house, and left it.
The irises are here because 21 years ago this week – Earth Day, as a matter of fact – my son was born, and his father planted these irises that morning in celebration of this wonderful new life.
I sit here this morning, under this old hackberry tree, next to the sweet iris, next to St. Francis, deeply glad, knowing that my son, in celebration of his 21 years, will wake up this morning under the canopy of giant redwoods at a camping area in California’s Sequoia National Park.
Pat
26 April 2008
