rock garden meadow in early summer

above is a picture of the right side of my backyard rock garden in late spring. i call this part the rock garden meadow because it's mostly flat. in the middle, purple sensation alliums are fading behind the tall deep purple iris, which are getting ready to bloom. three determined gladiator alliums grow steadily upwards in the foreground. my parents gave me the purple iris as one of my first garden plants when they came out to see me shortly after i moved into my new house in the summer of 2007. at that time, i was only just starting an idea of a garden, and all i knew was that i liked purple. since dad found the iris in bloom at a local nursery, this is the first year i have been able to watch them grow from the ground up. they are amazingly powerful before, in, and after bloom. on the distant right, may night, an energetically dependable and long-blooming salvia, is already in its early summer regalia. turkish veronica, which hugs the ground in a steady but uncommitted kind of way, throws out a very sweet peep of blue here and there. i took the picture above on may 21, 2008, and it was only a short week later that the iris and gladiators bloomed, in brilliant shades of purple (see top three photographs). the blooms were closed on may 28th and open on may 29th, what a difference a day can make! i'm not sure what the tall iris are called. i wasn't paying much attention to names back then. there are two kinds of tall purple iris here, one dark and brooding and one dark and bright. identification anyone?