Monday, June 20, 2011

I Love Irises

The house on the corner has a gorgeous iris bed over which I sigh every time I drive past. I, on the other hand, managed to kill all the purple irises in my own modest bed by digging them up and storing them in water while waiting to transplant them. Yes, water. I was a moron; there's no excuse. I tried to buy more irises online, but I soon realized that iris starts are really expensive. It would cost upwards of a hundred bucks to replace the ones I'd destroyed.

So the other day, I was driving past the iris-house and I noticed a small hand-printed sign on orange cardstock. Being the yard sale aficionado that I am, I craned my neck to read it, and I nearly drove into the ditch when I saw what it said. "Free iris starts."

Iris starts? Free???

It took me an entire weekend to get up my courage to knock, but today I had a moment of carpe dieming, so I pulled into their driveway, and the sweetest lady opened the door before I had even knocked.

It was awesome. They had decided they couldn't keep up with their iris beds, and they'd decided the most efficient way to get the beds cleaned out was to offer free iris rhizomes to anyone who wanted to dig them up. There were at least 12 different colors, and I left with several rhizomes of dark purple, purple, lavender, white tinged with lavender, orange, light blue, yellow, and mauve. I stocked all three of my flower beds and have enough leftover to share with my neighbor, my mom, and my sister.

Any day that includes improving my flower beds is a good day, and today was fantastic.

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