Division

I am overly ambitious when it comes to days of working outside. I rediscover this each time I go to divide my irises, and somehow forget over the next three years. As such, I have retreated from the yard to play on the internet.

I started today by digging up most all of the iris. The ones in the front planters, and in the back. I skipped only one planter, owing to a menacing labyrinth of lantana of the sort that no one should have to deal with on God's day.

Then I got to the dividing. Each iris rhizome will bloom once, and then spend the rest of its days growing new rhizomes rather than blooming. So you end up with big clumps of iris, with the old, non-blooming ones in the middle and the fresh new ones on the outside:

Sometimes, you end up with really cool shapes, like a crawdad:



So I dig up all the clumps, and I carefully remove any gross smushy rhizomes overcome by soft rot, and I carefully slice each rhizome away from the mass, and I end up with 30 rhizomes from just a couple clumps.

And then the stress sets in:

How am I going to fit all these back in the planters?

I'm supposed to space them out so they can stretch as they grow, how will I ever manage this with 30 of them?

I could give some away.

I begin to make a Craigslist ad offering up the extras to a good home, but I cannot bring myself to publish it - what if the ones I keep for myself never bloom again?

Then I will horribly regret my generosity.

I could plant them all close together.

But then how will they grow new rhizomes on the sides?

They will not have enough room!


It does not help that, while I attempt to throw all my energies at my tangential cycle of crazy, my dog is stealing my water bottles, ingesting my "granola bar"* wrappers, and trying to run away with the future of my iris garden.

So I've come inside in a sweet avoidance manuever. I'm debating watching The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It would be my third attempt. First try, I fell asleep 5 minutes in. Second try, I fell asleep 10 minutes in, but awoke several times, each time to a different, progressively more disturbing rape scene.

On second thought, maybe a nap is in order.


*I quote because I'm not sure one can rightfully refer to a chocolate chip granola bar dipped in chocolate as simply a granola bar. It seems to me that the market interested in granola, and the market interested in chocolate-dipped things, are very distinct. Some might say mutually exclusive. The existence of this food item baffles me, and mildly repulses me. Regrettably, not enough to abstain.