Iris Question

Why start them indoors? Iris need the cold of winter outside. My iris are just now starting to grow new fans, as it's starting to cool down at night, during the summer they didn't grow any at all. But I've grow iris in pots.

-- "In this universe the night was falling,the shadows were lengthening towards an east that would not know another dawn. But elsewhere the stars were still young and the light of morning lingered: and along the path he once had followed, man would one day go again."

Arthur C. Clarke, The City & The Stars