Tenaciousness

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Last year I had this big section of beautiful clear yellow irises along the side of my driveway. Irises bloom only bloom once. For the rest of the year we had to pull weeds out of the compacted clay soil. It was a maintenance nightmare. In our effort to simplify work, we took out the irises and replaced it with stones. Personally I hate stones but wedged between a hot macadam driveway and an equally hot stone wall, most flowers don’t do well. I dug up and gave away most of the irises and planted some in other parts of my yard.

I took this picture this week. I admire those plucky irises. We put landscaping fabric down under the stones so it had to work to grow. It’s also going to bloom. I will dig those out and plant them in my iris bed. Any flower that is tenacious enough to bloom through that adversity, deserves a good life.

It’s a message for people too.

60 thoughts on “Tenaciousness”

  1. Plants are so resilient and opportunistic. I love any weed in a sidewalk. There’s a localish church that has a tree growing out the top of its steeple. I saw a picture of an abandoned river barge that had so much vegetation it looked like an island.

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  4. The first year we moved here to the States, my father bought tulip bulbs from Holland. Put them in the ground in the Fall and in the Spring when he did yard cleanup, he found dozens of chewed-up bulbs from the squirrels and swore no more tulips. But one tenacious bulb managed to grow a tulip under a tree every year – he felt the same way. I actually took some photos of a neighbor’s bulbs that have come up for many decades, even though she/husband passed away in 2010 and a landlord bought it and plowed up the entire garden and this one flower continues to come up each year. I’ll write the post next year because I am astonished at the tenacity. It was meant to live.

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    • Tulips are deer food here. Whatever the deer don’t get the squirrels do. Mostly people plant daffodils because they don’t get eaten. Every once in a while there is a tenacious flower and you have to admire them.

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      • That’s too bad – my friend Carol can’t have anything without the deer stopping by to eat it. She has squirrels and possums that feast on the ferrel cats’ food, deer eating her birdseed and flowers – it would be discouraging.

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  13. I bought some cut irises at Trader Joe’s about a week ago… when I went to bed they were tight buds with no color showing. I wondered how long it would take for them to bloom. Didn’t have to wait… when I woke up next morning they had opened up with bright blue/purple petals with equally bright yellow accents. Unfortunately they didn’t last as long as my other cut flowers which are still going strong, but while they lasted they were a treat which I intend to repeat. I did take photos!

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  21. You have a beautiful piece of property from the glimpses I’ve seen ~> e.g., great rock wall . . . just my height for rock climbing (or sitting).

    Glad the iris will live to bloom another day!

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