3:25 p.m. - 2002-04-06
Iris Stealing, urrrrr, I mean borrowing.
I went Iris rustling today at Maple Hill Cemetary. Maple Hill is full of iris that were planted years and years ago and no one takes care of them, and they are straggly and anemic and the dirt around them has eroded to the point that all their tubers are exposed.
I can't stand it. I hate seeing these little spiky things withering away around Uncle Ollie's headstone from 1930. It drives me crazy, and brings up all my plant-rescuing urges.
And besides, iris bulbs are expensive!
So a couple of years ago, when we moved here, I started discreetly digging them up and moving them into my own garden. The first year they continued to straggle, the second year they realised that, hey, there's fertiliser! and this, the third year, finds them putting up huge sword-like leaves and enormous buds of what look like white or maybe yellow flowers.
That's the other marvelous thing about iris rustling. You never know what colour iris will come up, because the plants are so strung out they aren't blooming. You just have to wait until the plant recovers. It's like waiting for three years for a friend to have a baby so you can find out if it's a boy or a girl.
Since the first crop did so well, I went back out last year and again today and got some more. The cemetary was warm and all the dogwoods were blooming, and there had just been a funeral. The grave had piles and piles of flowers. The new trend in funeral flowers here is wreaths of huge, overblown orchids, but this one was more traditional with red roses and carnations and gladioli.
One of the monuments in Maple Hill is of a beautiful girl tossing flowers. I always bring flowers from the funeral bouquets to put in the basket she's holding. Today she got orange gladioli and some of the red roses.
And then I dug up some irises from Edith Somebody's grave. I think they might be a really deep purple because there was actually a bud on one of the outlying plants. I wrapped them in my scarf and slunk out of the cemetary, trying to look perfectly innocent and not like an iris thief.
On the way out I noticed someone had made vases out of old coke bottles wrapped in tin foil and put bunches of fake forsythia in them as grave decorations. There was a new wreath for the Confederate Veterans and they were preparing a grave in the very oldest section and there was a huge, very rectangular six-foot-deep hole. I must remember this if I go for a walk there tonight. I wouldn't want to fall in.
I got home and put the iris in next to my spirea bush, and then the mailman came with a letter from Margie, who is Jetboy's new caretaker. For all of you who knew Jim's cat Jetboy he is doing fine and has developed a taste for smoked salmon and, from the pictures, looks very, very happy.
And then Miss Beth and Joey stopped by with a plate of Indian food because I told Miss Beth I was eating cold spaghetti for dinner and she couldn't handle it and so they brought me India Palace buffet.
I have really good friends here in Huntsville.
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