1 week Ago By Mike Wolcott
I’ll begin by saying nobody knows for sure how old the irises are, but it’s safe to say they are really, really old.My dad — who is well on his way toward celebrating his 100th birthday in December — probably put it best when he said, “They were already old when I was a boy.”He was born in 1925.
His dad was born in 1894, and two generations of Wolcotts had farmed that Flournoy-area land before him. Somewhere along the line, one of them made a point of telling my dad that those irises had been there for a very long time.So, yeah.
These are some old plants we’re talking about.As best I can figure, they must have been planted by someone from the Hanks family, who homesteaded that patch of land in probably the 1870s. Daniel Boone Hanks, who I wrote about in this space six years ago, moved his family there from Boonville, Kentucky, and I’m pretty sure they brought those irises along for the ride.
I know this part for sure: They grew beneath an oak tree next to a small creek a good mile or so from the nearest county road, maybe 75 or so yards away from the long-since-abandoned Hanks home. There was nothing like them anywhere else on our 960-acre ranch. I’m no expert, but I’m told most irises in this area are “bigger-headed” than these.
A little research shows they’re plentiful in Kentucky, so I’m going with that.Anyway, maybe seven or eight years ago, a friend of the man who now owns most of our old ranch invited us out for a visit. I’d been lamenting the fact I didn’t have much in the way of keepsakes from our farming past, so I sought — and received — permission to transplant a few irises.
That’s where my wife (thankfully) came in. Of all the things that have been said about me — and, trust me, that’s a lot — “green thumb” isn’t one of them. But my wife, Sherrie, definitely has the magic touch, so she gladly volunteered to lead the effort.
When we found the patch, we were overjoyed to see hundreds of irises. It was early in the spring and they weren’t blooming yet. Sherrie went to shoveling, and in no time at all we were heading home with a few dozen keepsakes.
I had vague memories of them blooming a pale-bluish-white color for a couple of weeks every year out on the ranch, then quickly fading. I’d hoped the irises would find the soil here at our home to be as compatible as the ranch had been for the past 140 years or more.They did not disappoint.
The first time they bloomed at our home, they were purple. Deep purple, mixed in with some blue. The next year, they were more purple than the year before — so much so that every year, it’s become a tradition to show a picture to my mom so she can say, “They weren’t nearly that purple on the ranch.
”They’re a little early this year. They’re pretty much in full bloom right now ..
. maybe even tilting toward the “fading away” side. Some of the plants have double-blooms.
I don’t know if that’s rare or not.But what I do know is this: Every spring, I look forward to the blooming of the irises. Every spring, I pause to take photos and spend a good amount of time marveling at their all-too-brief moment of glory.
I think about how old they are. I think about how the first time they bloomed in that area — never fertilized by anything stronger than an occasional passing cow — there was no such thing as an automobile.Without so much as a single helping hand from a human for at least an entire century, they have survived floods and multi-year droughts, two World Wars, freezing winters and 115-degree summers, five generations of Wolcotts, the sale of the ranch and at least 35 of our 47 United States presidents.
(I’m going to kindly suggest that if that last fact makes you envious, perhaps what you really need to do is make more time to chill with nature.)Every year, they keep blooming. Every year, they remind me of where I grew up, and make me deeply appreciative of all of the roots first planted by our local pioneers — and how they’re still bringing joy to our lives today.
Those irises never fail to take me back to a simpler time or provide a few much-needed moments of bliss.May they stay forever young — no matter how old they get.Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record.
He’ll be on vacation next week, and his column will return April 20..
