Sharon,
I noticed your iris photo in the last ATP newsletter and the one in your latest blog had the tops clipped off. I can't believe that you are that bad a photographer. I'm guessing the when ATP cropped the photos square, no one checked to see if the subject was still in the picture. It should be a trivial thing to fix. If someone wants a square format, I like to crop them myself. I use Google's Picasa to crop, label and adjust the light, color and contrast of my pictures.
The oldest iris I have run across in tours of gardens is Swertii, introduced to commerce in 1612. Florentina beats that by just a few decades. I know that there are irises that have disappeared that have been introduced 50 years ago. A real testament to an iris's vigor that it can stick around for 500 years

It took me much longer to find the picture of Swertii than it did to crop, label, adjust light, color and contrast and change file size (about two minutes). Very easy software and free. There was a learning curve, but it was much easier to learn than Photoshop Elements.

Carl

Hi Carl,

Go back up into my blog and click on the pictures one at a time. If you are using Firefox they should enlarge on your screen as you click. The system here automatically crops them anyway and when you click and open them up, you'll see the entire picture. Try it and see if that helps.

Swertii is a beautiful iris. Don't you just love heirlooms like that?

Here, this iris is Sheba's Queen. Just click on the picture right here and see if it enlarges.