August Surprise

I got a surprise in my garden a few days ago: a Bearded Iris in full bloom:

This is one of the bulbs I bought on a visit to Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the fall of 2011. Of the six or so varieties I tucked into the soil back then, only one flowered in the spring of this year. The rest put up healthy-looking leaves, but no blossoms.

It looked like I'd have to wait until spring 2013 to see more flowers. And then, this!

The blooms are pure white and smell utterly divine. Like a perfume, there are top notes and middle notes too complicated to pin down. But the overall impression is incredibly sweet and floral.

Deep down in the center of each blossom, there are faint spreckles of pink, and the fuzzy yellow "beard" that marks every iris of this sort.

This must be an extremely hardy variety, to bloom in the heat of August. Hardy, or crazy.

If it's the latter, this Los Angeles transplant will fit right in. Welcome to LaLa Land, kid!