Charity Begins at Home - Chapter 3

Excerpt from Charity Begins at Home by Pat Otterness

CHAPTER THREE

? It was green. I blinked, unmoving. Not white, but green. Even the beards were green.?Omigosh!?Was it real? Maybe it would just turn white. Lots of developing iris buds look green initially, but when the blooms open they are either white or a pale yellow or blue. Never before had I seen an open bloom that was green.

With fumbling hands I raised my digital camera to my eyes, pushed the macro control for a close-up, and clicked the shutter. Again and again I captured images of this amazing iris, this tall bearded bonanza-in-the-making. With shaking hands I recorded the seedling number that classified it: H-331-327x219. I'd need to check my breeding records to identify the parents of this amazing creature, but?new mutation?seemed the most likely key to such an occurrence.

Notebook in hand, I began a more careful evaluation of the green seedling. Good increase: I saw five or six new divisions forming on the rhizome since I'd planted it last fall. The leaf base was purple, and ... whoa! ... the crests of the blooms themselves were also faintly edged in the same shade of purple, as were the outermost edges of the standards and falls. Oh, wow! The tips of the beard hairs were a deep green, but the base of the hairs was the same shade of purple as the rest. The wide, heavily ruffled falls were a bright, grassy green, RHS 140B, the standards a hair lighter, perhaps RHS 140C. This was no yellow bloom with a greenish cast like so many I had seen before. This baby was really green! I unsnapped my folding yardstick and measured from the ground to the top of the bloom. It was a tallish 38 inches. The sniff test gave me a strong whiff of fragrance both sweet and suggestive of citrus.

On closer inspection, I could see two more blooms would form on the terminus of this stalk after the current bloom faded. Moreover, there were three branches and a spur below the terminus, and the bloom stalk had the sinuous "S" curve of what is known in iris parlance as a show stalk. I felt a need to pinch myself to be sure I wasn't dreaming.

What else should I be doing, I wondered. Pollen? I checked, and yes, there was nice fluffy pollen on the anthers. I pulled a tiny brush out of my basket and moved a bit of the pollen from the anther to the stigmatic lip of the grassy green bloom. Yes! The stigmatic lip's sticky surface accepted the pollen in a way that could herald successful crosses in the future.

Hesitating only a moment to embrace the glory of my discovery, I pulled out my snippers and lopped off the head of the first true green tall bearded iris in history. With rapid strides, I carried my prize back to the house, immersed its short stem in a tiny vase of water, and placed it in a hidden corner of my bedroom, well-shielded from prying eyes. With only a backward glance to be sure it was still there, still real, I left the bedroom and did the unthinkable. I locked the door behind me.

There was still work to be done. Even an exciting find like the green iris was overshadowed by my need to get out to the garden and get to work. Since it was still very early in the iris bloom season, the number of new varieties opening blooms on my hillside was relatively small. Scattered around the garden were a only few dozen seedlings opening their first-ever blooms. I needed to take two photos of each new terminal bloom: a frontal view, and a side or quarter-side view.?I kept a notebook to jot down ID numbers as I photographed, so that I could match numbers to plants when I loaded the digital photos into my computer at the end of the day. This may sound easy, but it is very time-consuming, and most iris breeders don’t do it. They take pictures of only the best, most promising seedlings. Then they ruthlessly yank the rest out of the ground and throw them on the compost heap.?Barbaric!?I go my own way and gather photographic evidence of everything my crosses produce, good or bad.

I was in luck. The day was balmy, not hot as it sometimes is during bloom season. After I had dealt with the early blooms, I grabbed a quick sandwich and another peek at my green beauty, then returned to the work at hand.

April and May are the months when I get the most germination. Today my seed boxes were full of new seedlings. They looked like tiny blades of grass poking their heads out of the soil. I fetched a box of 2 ? inch clay pots, a bin of potting soil, and a small flat screwdriver.

When everything was in place on the outdoor potting table, I selected several seed boxes from a raised bed where I kept the seed boxes grouped. My seed boxes were 4”x4” plastic pots filled with potting soil and planted with 10 or more iris seeds. Every breeder has his or her own way of dealing with seeds. Some even plant them directly in the ground. I used handmade hardware cloth covers for each of my seed boxes to protect the seeds from rodents, then submerged the boxes part way down in the soil of the raised bed to prevent seeds from freezing.

Each of my seed boxes carried an identification number so I’d know which cross I was dealing with at any given time. The small flat screwdriver served as a shovel to gently tease each seedling out of the soil, lift it, and move it to a clay pot. As I potted, I noted important seedling information in my germination notebook, and copied it onto white plastic stakes that accompanied each of the seedling pots.

While I plodded through the slow, methodical process of potting and recording, my mind drifted again and again to the green iris hidden away in my bedroom.?Nothing could be more alien to my personality than hiding my light under a bushel. My natural impulse was to call everyone I knew to crow about the green iris I had discovered. Five years ago, there would have been no reason not to do so. Even a green iris would have been safe in plain sight out here, because visitors were few, and iris-informed visitors virtually nonexistent. In the past, my biggest threat was voles, tiny mouse-like creatures that dined on rhizomes. Marauder cows sometimes stepped on plants, or munched aluminum tags. My cats treated the garden like their own personal sandbox, and uprooted rhizomes from time to time. Human predators, however, had never been an issue.

Until recently, I had been the only iris breeder in the area, and one of only a few in the entire state of Virginia. Then, almost overnight, Nelson County was "discovered", and cow pasture was converted to iris beds all over the area. My own road was a case in point. My two acres, originally surrounded by apple orchard, then later by cow pasture, were now surrounded by commercial iris concerns.

I was happy to see the back side of the obnoxious cows that had regularly invaded my iris garden. They were farther down the road, now, wreaking havoc elsewhere. I missed neither the aroma exuded by the aforesaid "back sides" of the cows nor the tubercular sound of cows regurgitating cud. All in all, I bore the migration of cows and flies without any heart-wrenching sorrow.

The best thing I had going for my hope of hiding the green iris was my total lack of prestige in the iris breeding arena. I was a relative newcomer to iris breeding, known for my funny articles about my garden experiences, but not for my iris breeding. I didn’t encourage visitors, and never entered my plants in competitions. No one really expected anything magnificent to come out of my garden, not even me.?Quelle surprise!

?

At sunset, I found myself creeping up the hillside, shovel in one hand, three-gallon nursery pot in the other. Where was it? Maybe waiting 'til dusk wasn't so clever after all. It was already almost impossible to read the tags on the stakes that accompanied each iris seedling. I groped my way between rows of iris stalks heavy with un-bloomed buds 'til I found one whose terminal bloom had been removed. Squinting, face pushed up close to the tag, I read the numbers and knew I had found the right plant.

After a quick look around to assure myself that I was alone, I drove my shovel under the clump of rhizomes and lifted it out of the surrounding clay. After easing my prize, dirt and all, into the nursery pot for transport, I paused to pull up the wire stake with its all-important aluminum tag, and made my careful way down the hillside in the gathering darkness.

Suddenly, I froze. I had heard a cough, thick with phlegm, somewhere nearby.?Please, God, let it be a cow, I thought. Until a few years ago, my property had been surrounded by cow pasture. But now the nearest cows were miles down the road. This could be an intruder. I gauged the distance to my house and decided to make a run for it.

On the porch, I cursed myself for having locked the kitchen door. My trembling fingers fumbled with the key. It seemed like hours before the tumblers turned and I was safe in my warm kitchen. I switched off the overhead light and peered out into the darkness. Nothing. No sound. No motion. I carried my potted treasure into the depths of the house. Tomorrow ... surely tomorrow would be soon enough to decide the best way to camouflage my prize.

?

I paced about, closing shades, turning off lights. Finally, I picked up the phone and dialed. One, two, three rings, and at last, "Hello?”

"Chance, this is Chat," I said. "I heard somebody up in my garden, and it's creeping me out. Have you seen anybody around?"

"Naw! Not that I been lookin', but I ain't seen nobody. What did you hear, anyway?"

"I heard somebody cough. Sounded like a cow, but there aren't any cows out here. But you know, that mucousy kind of cough cows give that sounds like a really congested man?"

"Yep. I know the sound you mean. You sure there ain't no cows loose from up the road?"

"I don't think those cows miss this place enough to walk any five miles up the road just to torment me. Would you mind taking a look around?"

There was a silence that lasted a little too long, and then a reluctant "Well, I guess I could scout around a little."

"Thanks, Chance! I really appreciate this."

Silence ... then, "I'll be along in a bit. Watch for my light." A click.

I went to the teapot and filled a glass, dropped in ice cubes from the freezer. Nothing like iced tea, summer or winter. I keep a few soft drinks in the fridge for visitors, but iced tea is my beverage of choice. I sipped tea and watched out the window, but all was dark. Peepers, tiny frogs with big voices, filled the night with their cries, covering any other sounds there might have been.

The minutes stretched long, and my tension grew. Chance should have been here by now. His house was only a ten minute walk from mine. I looked at my watch again. Twenty minutes had passed. I waited. Nothing. Thirty minutes. I picked up the phone and hit redial. After four rings, Chance's voice asked me to leave a message after the beep.?Uh-oh!?Should I call 911 and risk embarrassing myself? What if Chance needed help?

I'll wait a few more minutes.?Maybe he's almost here. But the minutes ticked on, and the night felt eerie and full of shadows. I picked up the receiver and pressed the emergency numbers with reluctant fingers.

"Sheriff's office. How can I help you?" A man's voice. Reassuring.

I explained the situation. "Can you send someone out to see if Chance is okay? I'm afraid whoever was in my garden may have done something to him. He isn't answering his phone, and he never showed up here. I'm really worried about him."

"A Deputy is on the way," I was told. "Stay inside and keep your door locked." That was a no-brainer. If only I did feel brave enough to go to the rescue of my neighbor, but ... face it, I was scared silly. Worse, I was feeling increasingly guilty over having asked my neighbor to look for an intruder that I was too cowardly to accost myself. I made myself another glass of tea, and searched the cabinets for comfort food. A few stale cookies turned up, and helped to pass the time as I waited for either Chance or the deputy to appear.

There was a crunch of gravel out in the road, and I sat up straight. I hadn't heard a car, and anyway, there hadn't been enough time for a deputy to get way out here, not unless he was already mighty close by. Footsteps on gravel, and then silence. I strained my ears, wondering if it was Chance, or if it was the intruder. The handle of the door rattled, and I shrank back. Chance would have knocked, or called my name.?Omigosh!?What was I going to do now?

I heard the footsteps retreat, and knew he was heading around to the other door. Was it locked? Oh, please God, let it be locked!?I raced through the dark house and checked the knob. Hallelujah! It was locked. I was slipping the security chain into place when I heard an hellacious racket on the porch just outside the door. Curses and yowls intermingled and something heavy crashed off the porch just as headlights lit the driveway at the side of the house. I ran back through the house and threw open the kitchen door in time to see a bleeding man thrown up against the cruiser by a uniformed deputy.