“I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.” ~ Diane Ackerman
My purple iris’ were given to me in 1994 by then landscape boss, Joe Calhoun (yes, in one of my many lives I did landscaping). One of his clients was a Lexington horse farm – he didn’t say which one – and he’d been asked to thin their iris bed. Back then, the rhizomes were estimated to be between 90 and 100 years old. I didn’t own a house at the time, so I planted them at mom and dad’s. In 2000, dad’s idea of thinning the iris was to throw them over the hill. He didn’t count on how hardy they were. When I bought my house in 2007, I braved poison ivy and copperheads to get those rhizomes that survived, and most had. Boy, how they have proliferated back in the Bluegrass! When I thin, I share with my neighbors who often stop and compliment the iris. Their beauty is nothing short of stunning, and they’re such a testament to the never-give-up spirit that sometimes they stop me in my tracks, like this morning. I was late for work, but occasionally I have to stop and appreciate God’s creations. Be here now. I hope your May Day/Beltaine was as beautiful as mine.
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