Study of a bearded iris, watercolor

I have not done very many watercolors of flowers...it seems to be a popular subject though, and spring is the perfect opportunity to get some practice in!
From a photo provided by fellow artist, Ute Sturm, from Google+ community Group Watercolor Painting, here is my attempt at a bearded iris. I challenged myself with not tracing the photo reference I had, but I did do a quick pencil sketch. I layed down yellow on the top of the flowers. Then I wet the bottom of the flower and dropped in some maroon perylene. It quickly took over the bottom "beard" petals as well as half of the yellow I had already laid down.  It was a great effect but I needed some of the yellow back. After it dried, I had to go back and add in more yellow.
The last couple of paintings I have done have had a dark background, and this background was white. I had to put in a little color on the background.
Taking a step back, I can see my lower flower is "floating", and I forgot to add a stem for it. Oops.