It's not pink

Last June, I sought the help of my friend Mark. Mark is a preschool teacher who moonlights at a commercial perennial grower. A dear teacher at the elementary school was retiring, and I happened to know her secret wish to have a pink iris in her garden. Pinks are hard to find anyway, and the one she'd had once upon a time had not survived a move.

So I called Mark. Surely he could find a pink iris. He brought me two lovely pots with short foliage and a tag that read "Cherub's Smile" Tall, late bloomer, tangerine beard. Woohoo! I paid him the ridiculously low price, tied a bow around Alice's pot, and stuck mine out of the way. Mine didn't bloom last year.

Mark called me a few weeks later and said there had been a tagging error - the iris wasn't in fact, Cherub's Smile. It wasn't a bearded iris at all, but what it was? A mystery. I still don't know what it is, something Japanese. And purple. But pretty, nonetheless, no? Sorry, Alice, I'm still looking.