Old Iris

I can trace this iris back 45 years to the first garden I remember, though what I recall most intensely is lying on my back beneath a blue sky full of papery Oriental poppies--bright orange--waving on hirsute, wiry stems. The original garden was bulldozed to make way for a convenience store the summer I was ten or eleven, along with the first house I clearly remember living in. The iris--or a piece of it--moved when we moved. Most recently, I snagged a fan from beneath an encroaching blue spruce at my parents' house about five years ago. I planted the spruce trees--25 of them--and can't believe how large they've grown.