Irises #AtoZChallenge

The simple iris taught my spouse and I a lesson, a long time ago.  I'd like to share that lesson with the Blogging from A to Z Challenge, on I day.


There are so many kinds of irises.  Some are sweetly scented, like my Kool-Aid irises.

 Early spring irises, taken last month by an in law who lives in New York City.

 More early spring irises.

Now, for our story.

When my spouse and I were in our 20's, we bought our first house.  My spouse was an airman in the United States Air Force.  We didn't think we could ever be homeowners, but the couple who sponsored us in spouse's first duty posting were homeowners, and they encouraged us.  We bought a small brick two bedroom home in the South Central neighborhood of Wichita, Kansas.  It had a large, fenced yard.  We imagined our garden there and went to work dreaming of when spring would come.

Spring came, and with it, a bunch of plants with fan shaped leaves started to come up along the fence.

Spouse looked at the line of leaves with his brow furrowed.  "I know what those are", he said.  "I saw these growing in some vacant land behind my childhood home.  We don't want them."  With that, he took his shovel, and dug them all up.  And there were a lot of them- it was a long fence line.

But a couple of more erupted after the dig out.  We left them there, busy with other projects.  One day, they flowered.

They were beautiful bearded irises.

My spouse had dug up a long line of expensive, beautiful, bearded irises because he made an assumption and didn't have the patience to wait to see what the plants would do.

We learned our lesson.  We never did anything like that again.  We think first.  We wait to see what will come up.

Life is like that - a series of learning from your mistakes.

So are the days of our lives.