Soar-Dream-France: Iris and Elvis....AKA "Eerees" and "Elvees"!

Last year's trip with my French neighbors was about to get underway this time last year. From day one, it was a lesson in pronunciation and listening/comprehension. When I mentioned renting a car and that we could stop in Graceland on the way back from New Orleans, I didn't have a clue who Josie was talking about when she said she loved "Elvees"! It took me a couple more conversations about the trip to realize that on my first trip to Graceland I had gone to see Elvis in Memphis, but this time I was going to be seeing "Elvees in Memphees" and I was going to be the "Geede". We'd laughed about this together during the trip and on and off since. You can imagine the strings of words that could get you in trouble between the two languages. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of breaking the code. I now knew that most of the "i"s in French tend to be pronounced with a long "e" sound from English. It still takes another step for me in my comprehension to make the swap, and sometimes I still don't get it.

Imagine sitting on my parents' back porch in the morning with my friends. We're having our coffee and petit dejeuner together surrounded by Mom's garden on three sides. Of course, there had to be an "écureuil" (squirrel) in the tree that I got ribbed about and then Josie commented on how she loves"Eerees". I was in that no-man's land in my mind when she pointed to the flowers. I used to say: "Oh, you mean Iris!" out loud, but I've now learned to just file it away and go on. It seems to be something about where the accent falls on syllables. I'm Laury in the states, but I'm Lauree here.

I've been trying to grow irises here at the Chatette for the last couple of years. I get green with no flowers regularly and have no idea what I'm doing wrong. Yesterday, Dali and I came back from our walk and I noticed a little something popping out on one of our irises on the terrace. We actually have a bud! It will be our first iris at the Chatette! Maybe they've decided it's okay to start blooming around here since I know that they really are "eereeses" when they live in France!