Mother's Irises - Lucille's Irises

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Mother's Irises
The fourteen tall bearded irises Lucille Alessi registered, and the ones she loved best

Her Garden · Mother's Irises · Divisions for Postage
These are Mother's fourteen, in the order she registered them, with her own descriptions boiled down from her notebooks. I've given the year each was registered and the colors of the standards (the upright petals), the falls (the ones that hang down) and the beards. Mother named every one of them after something in her life, and I've put the story beside each name. All fourteen are growing in my backyard in Bloomington, and all fourteen bloomed this May.

I can't show you pictures yet. Cliff took two rolls this spring, and the man at the camera store says I need a scanner, and Cliff says we'll see. In the meantime I've tried to describe them the way Mother would have, which is to say exactly.

Name and year	Standards / Falls / Beards	The story
'Teddy's Blue' 1964	Medium blue / medium blue / white	Her first, named for Dad. Tall and sturdy and nothing fancy, like him.
'Alessi Stitchwork' 1966	White, edged violet / white, stitched violet at the rim / pale yellow	A plicata. She said the edging looked like a row of hand stitches, and it does.
'Nancy Lucille' 1967	Flamingo pink / flamingo pink / tangerine	For me. I'd been married six years and had two children, and she said it was high time I had a flower. I've never been so embarrassed or so proud.
'Lillian's Gold' 1969	Deep yellow / deep yellow / yellow	For my sister, so that nobody could say she played favorites. Lillian says hers is prettier.
'Sangamon Dusk' 1971	Dark violet / darker violet, velvety / bronze	The color of the sky over the river on a summer evening, she said. Smells faintly of grapes.
'Bias Cut' 1973	White / violet / white, tipped yellow	An amoena, white on top and colored below. A seamstress's joke: it hangs beautifully.
'Selvage Edge' 1975	Butter yellow / white with a yellow rim / yellow	The selvage is the finished edge of a bolt of cloth. She liked the clean border on the falls.
'Basting Thread' 1977	Light lavender / deep violet / blue-white	A bitone. She basted every seam before she sewed it, and she said this iris was the same: patient.
'Rummage Sale' 1979	Yellow / maroon, veined / gold	For the parish sale where it all started. Loud and cheerful. Everybody's favorite but hers.
'Grandma's Pincushion' 1982	Orchid pink / orchid pink / red-orange	Named by my daughter, who was nineteen and thought it looked like the tomato pincushion on Mother's sewing machine.
'Railroad Man' 1984	Blue-black / blue-black / dark blue	The year after Dad died. The darkest thing in the garden, and the first to open every spring.
'Washday Monday' 1987	White / white, heavily ruffled / white	Clean as sheets on the line, she said. Her best white, from 'Snow Flurry' blood on both sides.
'Amanda Grace' 1991	Peach / peach, lighter at the center / tangerine	For her great-granddaughter, my granddaughter, who was four and asked if she could have a flower too.
'Last Fitting' 1994	Lavender-blue / white with a lavender-blue rim / light blue	Her last. The last fitting is when the dress is finished and the bride sees it for the first time.

Her Favorites by Other Breeders

Mother grew about a hundred and fifty named irises besides her own, and she used many of them in her crosses. These were the ones she loved best and talked about most. I have every one of them. 'Blue Rhythm' I lost to rot the first winter, and a friend in the iris society sent me a replacement the next July. She would say the names of the breeders the way other people talk about ballplayers.

Iris	What it is, and what she said about it
'Wabash' Mary Williamson, 1936	White standards, deep violet falls. Won the Dykes Medal in 1940. An Indiana iris, and older than I am. Mother used it more than anything else for her amoenas.
'Snow Flurry' Clara B. Rees, 1939	A ruffled white. Mother said nearly every ruffled iris in the world has a little 'Snow Flurry' in it somewhere, and she was proud that hers did too.
'Blue Rhythm' Agnes Whiting, 1945	A clear medium blue. One of the first she bought on purpose, from a catalog, in 1959.
'Stepping Out' Schreiner's, 1964	White with heavy dark blue-violet plicata edges. Dykes Medal, 1968. She said she'd have traded all her plicatas for this one, then admitted she wouldn't.
'Victoria Falls' Schreiner's, 1977	Light blue with a white blaze on the falls. Dykes Medal, 1984. Grows like a weed and blooms its heart out.
'Beverly Sills' Ben Hager, 1979	Coral pink. Dykes Medal, 1985. She grew it by the back door so she'd see it first thing.
'Titan's Glory' Schreiner's, 1981	Dark violet-blue, silky. Dykes Medal, 1988. She said it made her own 'Railroad Man' look like it needed ironing.
'Jesse's Song' Bryce Williamson, 1983	White with violet plicata markings. Dykes Medal, 1990. The last new iris she bought, in 1993.

A Few of Her Rules

Written on the inside cover of her 1975 notebook, and I go by them:

· Plant them shallow. An iris wants its back in the sun.
· Clean up every old leaf in the fall. The borer is waiting.
· Divide in July, when it's too hot to do anything else anyway.
· Don't fuss over them. They came to this country in covered wagons.
· Keep two of everything you love, in two different beds.
· Write it down.
· Give them away.

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Last updated Friday, September 17, 1999