OK -- I gotta tell ya a story. In 1985 when we purchased this farm, it took us awhile to conclude all of our business in Illinois, so we couldn't move right away. We would make trips down for a few days and move pickup trucks of stuff each time -- one time we rented a small moving van and brought a good-sized load of some furniture and boxes of books and misc. stuff. As spring came on, the grass began to grow here and was getting taller and taller. We had no way to mow it -- coming from Chicago suburbs, we only had a push-mower -- which couldn't quite cut it here! But on one trip down I was fascinated to see deep purple blooms here and there in the by now very tall grass. On investigation, I saw that they had blade-type leaves and gorgeous deep purple blooms. I did not know what they were. Thirty years later, I learned today that they are Louisiana Black Gamecock Irises. Cool, huh?
We did finally purchase a tractor and bush-hogged the grass -- but not before I dug up every one of those strange plants so they wouldn't get whacked off by the bush-hog. That's when I discovered their weird root system. I planted them in an area together, and kind of forgot about them. A couple years later they bloomed again -- apparently forgiving me for interrupting their free lifestyle.
What I can't figure out is how they became so scattered around the property. No one would plant them in the middle of a yard, I wouldn't think. Our house had been empty for a couple of years before we bought it, and had been rented out for quite a few years before that -- so there was no one I could ask. It was originally a working farm -- cattle and crops -- and the fence for the cattle was a very short way from the back of the house, so there was really very little backyard. And yet -- there they were -- scattered throughout the property behind the house -- waiting for me.
