Another Blast from the past...

Another oldie from years ago...
You can really get down to some serious thinking, I've discovered, while down on your knees in a flower bed.  I wondered first of all, how I had ever gotten myself buried knee deep in transplanted Iris.  I wondered aloud why Iris bulbs are always crooked? (My Aunt Katy speculated maybe God had a sense of humor.)  I wondered why you couldn't just buy the whole bulb in the dirt...but no, it seems you must leave part of it showing and facing the direction you want it to flower.
If you haven't guessed by now, flowers & I have a rather stormy relationship.  My Aunt Katy has a small flower laden yard in the city. She seems determined to transplant it onto my acreage.   First I must chop up the petrified earth with a pitchfork, (rightly so the devil's sidekick), then with a shovel, then a hand spade & finally with my fingers.
I must carry water in a bucket because I can't find the hose & each Iris "bed" is yards apart from the others because we are planting them in clumps at the base of trees. This is a clever intro into an insanity called "naturalizing".
Finally a stubborn root wins the battle with my shovel and lands me firmly on my fanny.  I begin to think what I "thunk" before...maybe plastic flowers aren't so bad after all.
Postscript:  All the flowers still bloom beautifully, even  25 years later. So I guess they were worth the effort afterall.  Thank you Aunt Katy!