the Heirloom

As a new bride 95 years ago, Cora Stafford, my husband's grandmother, our daughters' great-grandmother, planted these iris at her first home in the Lake Champlain valley of New York. When the family moved to the "big farmhouse" in 1948, she took some with her to plant in her garden there. When the farm was sold several years ago, I dug some to save, these are growing next to our front door in the Black Hills of South Dakota. As those daughters moved into their own homes in Minnesota, some went there with them. For more than 90 years these iris have been growing in a family garden, some of them, miles from where they started. Cora would be so delighted to see them still blossoming 3 generations later.