Chamber Music and Irises

I love the colour of the Siberian iris at Days on the Claise.

At the weekend I attended a wonderful concert in the beautiful church of St Pierre de Maille.
During the interval, at the table where refreshments were served, there was a delightful bowl of pink irises. Impressionant! I had never seen that colour before.

A few days later my French neighbour was weeding her garden when I admired her peonies, roses, clematis in a very English country garden. Sometimes in summer the aroma in the air is breathtaking. When I exclaimed about her different coloured irises and told her about the pink ones, off she went to show me the catalogue for Cayeux : a business that sells irises in UK and France. 
I was very impressed.  I suppose I could plant irises at the end of the garden on the bedrock rockery.
I have now researched that one is supposed to cut off each faded flower and also  with a neat diagonal cut prune each stem before the roots are divided.  I am not a gardener but try hard!
This year my irises flowered abundantly. They were a pale lilac and had been taken from rhizomes from my friend's garden 2 to 3 years ago.  Neither of us remember the irises flowering in the past! All these associated irises 'stem' from the same small sample I acquired on a walk 'somewhereinfrance'.

The chamber music was exquisite:

Schubert: Piano Trio no 2 Eb major opus 100 D929
Faure:  Piano Trio D minor opus 120
Brahms: Piano Trio in Cminor opus 101

These photos were taken at Vicq when the Gartempe was flooded:

It's a shame that such resplendent kings do not linger for the summer.