Wild flag.

A rather light example of the wild iris that grows in these parts.

The wet parts, that is. Which isn't a lot of places around here. This one happens to be right next to the bottom step of our front stairs. The second to bloom this spring, and a descendant of a cluster of bulbs I transplanted in from the wild many years ago.

I spotted them one of my first springs in this country. Growing in a small wet sump on the right side of the highway as you headed north. Just a few hundred meters from the crest at milepost nine, the low rise that the highway department has incorrectly labeled as "The Continental Divide."

It isn't.

The real Divide, which is actually just the Atlantic half of the Divide, is more than a mile further north. But is a non-descript, nearly flat sage bench at that point. Hardly impressive enough for a sign that tourists would stop and take pictures of.

Which they do at the mislabeled divide. Never noticing, apparently, that the two sides of that low rise mislabeled the Divide both drain into the same draw just a half-mile to the east. The crest of that little rise could barely divide a football field, much less a continent.

But whoever built the highway through this low rise had done a less than perfect job of grading their ditches. Leaving a small low spot, no bigger than this desk, that held snow melt a little later in the year. That gathered a little runoff every time it rained.

And somehow, somewhen, a wild iris seed found that small oasis. And grew. And spread, cloning bulbs off the original, until it was a small clump of blue flags standing out in the brown and green, almost a whole foot across. Not another of this species for miles and miles around.

And every spring, along about this time, I would enjoy seeing that little spot of blue colour.

Until, sometime in the 1980s, early in the spring before the bulbs had sent up their flagpoles, I found the pseudo-Divide covered with different flags. Orange flags. Surveyors' flags. All along both sides of the highway. And my little clump of flags was well surrounded by the manmade orange ones.

Days later the construction started. Contractors working to widen and lower the roadbed through this little rise, blading the ditches wide and shallow to reduce the snow drifts that tried to block the highway every winter.

I have often wondered what the construction flagger thought. About the outfit's truck that pulled out of line in traffic, and drove off into the ditch. About the man in uniform who jumped out with a spade and quickly exhumed a small clump of sod, about a foot across, gently slid it into the truck, and then pulled back onto the asphalt to head on south.

But they're still here. Having claimed most of the front flower bed, and making occassional forays into the yard.

Our Ninemile flags.