Last November, Sharon and I spent an entire day digging out a bed of fifty year old irises. Planted long ago by the mother of our house's previous owner, they had lived the last few years in obscurity, a mangled mess of ratty grey leaves in a patch of dirt next to where we keep our trash cans. They flowered occasionally, but we never really took notice of them. Then, at the suggestion of one Sharon's gardening books, we decided to dig them up and split them. Apparently, irises like that. Plus, the fall and impending winter had us jonesing for a garden project. So, we figured "what the heck" and set to work. Before we knew it, we had over a hundred iris tubers. After amending the soil in their original location and replanting as many as we could fit there, we still had a bucket full of them. Not wanting them to go to waste, we did what any self respecting gardener would do. We planted them everywhere.
Over the past few months, they have all grown dramatically. Still, having never replanted irises before, we really had no idea if we should expect them to bloom. Then, a few weeks ago, we noticed one of them sending up a flower bud. As we'd done with my first sunflower, we went into flower watch mode, checking daily to see if today was the day we would see the rebirth of someone's forgotten treasure. A couple of weeks ago, right around Easter, our vigil was rewarded. A beautiful yellow bearded iris.
I was ecstatic! I spent a while trying to get a great picture, with the expectation that it would be the centerpiece of a post on transplants...an opportunity to talk about how sometimes uprooting things makes them grow stronger, more beautiful...about how being transplanted is the story of my life, and the lives of the people I love most. Maybe I'd use it to start talking a bit about my mother, the epitome of a transplant herself, whose middle name is Iris. It was going to be brilliant!
And then an awful thing happened. I sat down to write this metaphorical masterpiece and nothing happened. Inspiration gone. Maybe I just needed to mull it over a bit, give it some time. So I waited a couple days and tried again. Still nothing. Worse than nothing -- total and utter mediocre garbage. Not even a good first draft.
But I was committed to the fact that this elusive expository gem would be my next post, so I waited some more. And then a little more after that. Every day added to the pressure to write something spectacular. After all, if I'd waited this long, it would be shame to settle for anything less.
Today I realized that, as I've pondered my perennial muse, waiting for a thought that might never find its way into words, countless other inspirations have passed me by. There are bloomin' iriseseverywhere. The salvia has exploded into whites, purples, pinks and reds. Canna is once again poking out of the ground and yesterday, the first rose bloomed by the back porch. There are thousands of beautiful things left unsaid, un-thought.
How often must I learn these lessons? That as I wait for the right way to say what I want to say, I miss the opportunity to say the things I should say? That as I gaze out at the horizon for the ship I dream of to come in, a hundred ships bound for dreams unknown have left the dock?
A few months ago, struggling with her own darkness, Sharon asked me what the point of life was. In a moment of rare wisdom, I answered: To live it. We all have hopes and dreams. They are, in some ways, necessary evils, mile markers we see in the distance that allow us to lie to ourselves and say that, when we get there, we will stop running. We will rest. We will be done. In more ways than one, I have been sleepwalking, chasing lofty goals and aspirations. But if I am to truly live life, sometimes even the dreaming of the dream must be deferred. Otherwise, I will continue to wake and find I have traveled a distance I cannot remember.
So my blog on transplants will have to wait for another day...or perhaps another life...because there is still light in this day. More than enough time to pour myself a wee whiskey, sit in the garden and catch up with the things I've missed.
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