a color story: the dwarf iris and the eggplant

Spring is in the air. The last ice sheets that surfaced the grounds has thawed away. The dark hue of the soil is a nice change from the dull whites. As I looked deeper into the garden beds, I noticed green foliage surfacing. These were the bulbs that I planted last fall. This is not my first season of gardening bulbs but it always amazes me to see them so early in spring. The most common bulbs that I have planted in the fall are classics: daffodils and tulips.

I continued to explore other areas where there maybe more green foliage surfacing. It was a trip on memory lane. I noticed that there would be unusual spotting of foliage where I quickly plant without permission. It was like graffitiing on soil; it wasn't suppose to be there. However, most bulbs were designed to be placed in certain areas in which they were located in high frequented visiting windows. 

Regardless about the bulb planting intentions, the steps to planting them are the same. It is tedious work. You dig up the soil to the recommended depth. Add some fertilizer in the hole. Plant the bulb with the tip facing up. Fill back the hole with soil. Repeat. I did this for over 300 hundred bulbs last fall Tulip fever is in my air. No wonder I feel so invested in their growth.

Interestingly, the more seasons I have planted through bulbs, the more I appreciated the process to get to the end result, rather than the end result itself. I fell in love with the long way of doing things where I can witness the fruits of my labor. The end result is just a "feature time stamp". 

I believe bulbs are mostly perennials (meaning that they appear every year) and it is hard to keep track of them all from previous seasons. So, I started to see a smaller grass-like foliage. It was familiar but there was no immediate recognition. It could have been a freakish nature of grass that I never encountered.  And then it hit me when I saw its neighbors. An odd color flowering. It wasn't red like a tulip. It wasn't yellow like a daffodil. 

It was purple and oddly beautiful. 

This plant is a Dwarf Iris, one of the early blooming flowers. As you may guess, it stands only 4 to 6 inches high. The foliage is deceiving because it looks like a tall grass. The Dwarf Iris is also known to be quite fragrant. 

However, from my color combination perspective, it is not attractive.  

The last time I have seen a brown, green, purple combination was finding an old eggplant in the back of the fridge. This is usually a signal to throw something out. It is not fresh, it is dead, and it has no use. Although we can argue that flowers have no utility, why did I react a different way when seeing the same color combination on a small flower?

It could be that I wasn't anticipating such an early bloom in relative to the other foliage in the garden. It may be that the flower pedal shapes that the colors fill in are absolutely different in comparison to an eggplant. Or maybe it could be the cute and petite nature of the the Dwarf Irises. However, I think its about the color sequence that led up to the purple. 

Colors have a story. The order that you see them in is what brings context to the color. 

In terms of the Dwarf Iris, my fascination is rooted in my color exposure of the garden beds. When I was looking out in the winter time, all I saw was white. Then, the ice melted which revealed the dark brown of the soil. Then, the green foliage appeared. Expecting red tulips or yellow daffodils, purple was the first non-green color of spring. Purple was the accent of a new season. 

However, the story with the eggplant is a sad one. I was first exposed to its bright purple in the grocery store. Then it was bagged, placed inside the white fridge and slowly eroded to a brown, unhealthy, inedible state. 

The colors for both stories are similar but the order that they tell their stories are different. One is about the life and the other is about death. 

I believe that my emotional reaction to seeing the purple brown combination as a whole was similar to seeing an old eggplant in the fridge. Since I encounter the latter situation more frequently,  I have experienced a paradigm shift when I witnessed the purple brown combination in a typical flower story form.