Of Irises

The irises have been blooming. I like how the purple petals unfurl from points into tri-lateral lamps and their aroma is sweet and potent. This year the irises are larger and have more blooms -- I'm supposing that the bulbs have had longer to get established and that this year we've had more sunlight than last year.










The purple and green go well together. My folks have giant bearded irises (which I covet) growing at their house. I like the giant purple ones the best, although the yellow ones are nice, too (I think I've seen some pale blue ones growing at there, which are fun). When the sunlight filters through the iris blades, the different shades of green are beautiful.













My camera was a little confused on the auto-focus, but I think this photo came out OK. It's a sort of Georgia O'Keefe. I like it because the base of the petals look like a reptile or alien skin.



I didn't notice it at the time, but the sunlight created the number 7 on the side of the flower. It must be a sign!







Whenever I take multiple photos of flowers opening, I'm always struck by how the flowers start out so densely packaged. Sometimes I think it would be cool if NASA could use inflatable polymer sheets coated with photovoltaic material for the solar panels on spacecraft. I think that's the way flowers open, only with sap or water through the flower petal veins instead of air in a balloon....

More photos here.