So how are your gardens looking today? Ours is doing amazingly well right now, which is quite a surprise since no one has had a chance to get out there and weed it properly. Hell, there are a couple of small tumbleweeds that got blown into the rose bushes and the irises from the heavy wind days that still haven’t been removed yet.

It’s frankly amazing that those irises have grown back again. When we remodeled the driveway my grandfather and his buds got the brilliant idea that transplanting the rose bushes, hedges, and even the flower beds with a backhoe would be very effective and a time saver. The roses grew back, one hedge died and had to be replaced, the mulberry trees never made a comeback, and all of the flowers died – sans these irises. They survived the brutality and have made a comeback every year since. Simply amazing. Especially since these ones had looked the worst for wear too. All of the other irises (yes, we had several different species) and tulips didn’t make it. We also lost our pink roses and just have the red.

Frankly I didn’t want to see our driveway changed, but the way we had it initially, with the bushes lining the driveway, made it very narrow and long.¹ It also meant that you had to back out which scared people since our driveway merges with a canal road. A family friend had a similar design, no canal road but very narrow shrub lined driveway, it proved to be a serious hazard. He’s around my grandfather’s age, but his wife is older. They had stair lifts² installed in the house after she became wheelchair bound. To make a long story short, she was alone in the house one day, extremely disoriented due to the amount of prescriptions she had to take, and tried to get up the stairs. She ended up falling down them instead. When the paramedics and first response team got there they had one hell of a problem, first the response team couldn’t park close (fire truck!) then afterwards, in order for the ambulance to get out the police and crew had to move their vehicles because they’d blocked them in.

Very dangerous setup, yes? It’s why we didn’t protest the destruction of our garden that lay on the other side of the shrubs. I didn’t like how it was manhandled, but recognized the necessity of it. So every year, when these irises grow back I am utterly amazed at their tenacity and will to live.

See, even the weeds are coming up pretty. I guess I need to get out there and start weeding them. At least they’ve been getting watered regularly.

1. Anyone who has seen it now, knows the driveway is funnel like and opens up to offer enough room for three cars to park comfortably and turn around. [↩]
2. the animation on that page gives you a perfect example of what they are if you don’t know what I’m talking about [↩]