OREANA - Alice Brooks of Oreana wanders through her iris flower beds, greeting each blossom by name, especially those whose plant marker is missing.

There's Thornbirds, she said. Here's Victoria Falls. Over there are Tut's Gold, Luxor and Cable Car.

"I pick flowers by the names of places we've visited," she explained.

And there are plenty of irises to greet, about 200 of them, mixed in among about 30 varieties of peonies, some lilies, hostas and cannas.

Brooks' flowers are not solely planted for their beauty. They have a mission to carry on, one started by Warren and Alice Brooks nearly 20 years ago.

It was the mid-1980s. Warren Brooks retired after 30 years with Jewel Tea Co., Alice Brooks said. And her job was one of those which was downsized. But they weren't ready to retire, so instead of just sitting around, she taught herself enough computer skills to produce r©sum©s for them.

"As a child, when missionaries came to church," she remembered, "I was fascinated."

They put out feelers to the Peace Corps and a couple of church-backed mission programs.

"They all called us and acted like they wanted us to come," she said. They got so far into the Peace Corps applications that they even had the physicals and dental examinations. But then the phone call came from a church program in Africa where schools were being built and upgraded.

As a result, Alice and Warren Brooks were in Swaziland for a few years to help work on the schools. They found no teacher housing, no toilets and the woman who became a close friend, Lizzie Dludlu, teaching a class in each corner of an African Methodist Episcopal Church.

"I said, 'Lizzie, where are the toilets?'.;" Alice Brooks recalled. With none available, Dludlu's response was, "It's getting so you have to watch where you walk."

The community's water source, a reservoir, was home to a hippopotamus and some pelicans and served as the watering hole of the local cattle as well.

"I saw women washing clothes there," Alice Brooks said. "A child would bring a bucket (from there) to school."

Teachers are paid by the fees charged students, she continued, and that's where the Brookses now help. Soon after they came home in 1988, the family stopped Christmas gift exchanges and instead put the money into a scholarship fund. That fund now is supplemented by the sale of Alice Brooks' flowers.

"I'm just the digger," said Warren Brooks.

"Brooks (that's how Alice fondly refers to Warren) says I'm crazy," said Alice Brooks, smiling, for charging so little for the iris rhizomes. They usually sell for $2 or $3 each, but peony starts run about $5.

"The Good Lord multiplied these for us," she explained. "I might as well let people enjoy them."

And, she stressed, irises aren't hard to grow.

"They do just keep coming back," agreed Jennifer Schultz, University of Illinois Extension Macon County unit educator in horticulture.

"In general, (irises) do very well. They tolerate poor, dry sites. They are one of the lower-maintenance perennials."

Alice Brooks puts bone meal into the hole dug for each new rhizome. She cautioned that irises shouldn't be overfertilized and that if they are left to grow in a spot that's too wet, they are apt to get borers.

"They need sun," she emphasized. And the green leaves feed the plant, so they shouldn't be cut off.

"At some point," said Schultz, "they will do better if you divide them, just like any other perennial. I have some that came from my grandma; they can be divided among friends and passed around."

They are, she added, "a kind of living scrapbook."

Arlene Mannlein can be reached at amannlein@;herald-review.com or 421-6976.

How to help

To purchase iris rhizomes or peony starts, call Alice Brooks in Oreana at 468-2333.