My dad, who passed away almost a quarter-century ago, was something of a gardener, and one of his favorite flowers came from a stretch of Japanese Iris that resided along the side of the house in Cranston where I grew up. My mom stayed there after he passed away in 1994, and the year after she succumbed to cancer more than 10 years later, we made the hard decision to sell the ancestral abode. We divided the stuff, but one thing I made sure I came away with was as much of that Iris patch as I could safely transplant into my hillside garden. The plants came through the ordeal fine, and, soon enough, they settled in to their new home. Alas, they never bloomed. Since they were part of my dad's legacy, I let them stay put, even though, more than once, I thought about replacing them with surer blossoms. This was a flower garden, after all, and a good gardener can't afford to be a sentimental softie. But the leaves were graceful, the plants were never troubled by disease and bugs, and, well... maybe someday they'd bloom. I could wait. Today, after noticing a week ago that a few of them actually had flower buds, my decade of patience was rewarded. Japanese Iris are notably gorgeous. This one, because it carries so many memories, was doubly so. I'm glad I waited.