Use colored yarn to classify flowers

A friend gave me an assortment of iris rhizomes. When the plants bloomed, I had a hodgepodge of colors and sizes, an effect I didn’t like. I decided to regroup them by color and size, which is a task best done once the plants have finished flowering. So I marked the plants with colored yarn while they were still blooming.

I tied loops of one yarn around all the blue irises of the same size and variety, another yarn around all the yellow irises, and so on. In the fall, long after the flowers had faded, the yarn loops told me how to group the plants in a more pleasing arrangement.