There was an older photo or two of the iris plants, planted by my mother. I had done several shots of them in black and white with a 35mm Argus. Most people will not know or care that I shot those with Tri-X and Plus-X and experimented with using several different Wratten color filters. The plants were in an isolated corner of the fence on the west side of the house, near a strip of half dry Bermuda lawn. There was a bit of barbed wire on one side and white boards on the other side, of the clump of four or five bulbs in flower. My guess is that it was around 1962 that I made that study.
We had moved there in 1959, to the 1880s era farm house of the grain ranch. I left for college in September 1964 and never moved back. The folks were there until 1972. The address was then 24245 Raymond Road, and the property has a great Madera County history and is now in ruin. It was quite an operation with large chicken coops and a new feed barn on the north edge of the ranch group, a granary barn, a bunkhouse, blacksmith shop. A dairy and stock barn was on the east edge of the place, which barn was “the shop” when we were there. That’s where I began welding and doing metal sculpture. I witnessed that barn burning down at the end of harvest in August 1964. Mom liked violets, and is perhaps why she liked iris. I never discussed that with her, but perhaps it was because of the pre-World War II Madera High School colors of being Purple & White. So, here it is Easter and iris seems right. Iris always reminds me of The Roberts Ranch.
Tim
Timothy J. Desmond
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Interesting bit of history. I really like traveling out and about that area. So much history..
Chuck, thanks for the comment. Raymond Road, I believe it’s Avenue 21 heading east, but, it used to be called Raymond road all the from the old Tozer Bridge near McWaters corner gas Station and store. So out there on Avenue 21 with the pistachio trees on the south and new development on the north side, you come to the curve in the road at the place where the gas and store is located. The curve turns north and after a mile there is the metal half-dome type barn on the right. Just before that barn is a dirt road on the right, running east. Our mailbox used to be right there. The road runs back about a half mile to the Roberts ranch. There pistachios all around there and on the south side of that dirt road, but the house is difficult to see from there. Drive farther on Raymond road, past the half-dome [Quonset hut shape] barn, there is open fields on the east side. There is a sloping low area that gives a view of the Roberts ranch house. That area used to be all grain farms from the Fresno River to the north to Daulton Ranch and to the oak trees on the west side of Hensley Lake. A lot of it was by the Archibald family and their kin. But other families had grain fields west of there to the Berenda. Where it was too rocky and steep remained cattle pasture, but there was fairly flat land and gentile hills along the north side of Fresno River, up to where Raymond Road runs into the oak trees. Adobe Ranch owned a huge chunk of it for many decades. You got me going again.