The spring forecast is rainy with a chance of purple. Royal purple iris and Queen Elizabeth orris root pillowed in a soft nimbostratus raincloud.

That swimming, sloping, elusive something about the dark-bluish tint of the iris which seemed still to retain the shadows it had absorbed of ancient, fabulous forests where there were more birds than tigers and more fruit than thorns, and where, in some dappled depth, man’s mind had been born. – Vladimir Nabakov

Art: Black Iris III by Georgia O'Keefe, 1926