Can I tell you a sad little story?

I’ll wait while you get ready… you might need a hanky or maybe a box of tissues.

A few years ago… I had a very nice home in a very nice area of Toledo… actually a fairly fancy suburb of the fine Glass City.  It was a very nice house and it was the very first house that my husband and I ever owned.   We started out with a pretty nice joint, I will say so.   We looked and looked and well, in the end, we picked this one primarily due to it’s locations with some good schools that our daughters could go to… primarily our youngest, Maggie as she is autistic and needed some special attention at the time.

And at the house, I got to really expand my gardening skills.   I had beautiful gardens and flower beds all over that house.  Raised beds, and patches of beautiful plants.   I loved gardening…  and I really worked hard at learning all about it, so much so that I was actually thinking about taking the Master Gardener test with the county.

That’s some serious plant love.

But things changed and got the big D and I couldn’t keep the house and so, well, I lost it through foreclosure.   It was very rough time and I don’t recommend the whole adventure to anyone…  but it did change me and I think probably for the better.   It was a rough path to travel, but I made it and things are good now.

But the one of the things that I missed the most were these beautiful Siberian Irises that I had gotten at the Toledo Botanical Garden’s Mother’s Day Plant Sale.  I had gotten them several years running… along with other beautiful plants, at the sale and ended up with them all over my yard, here and there.  So delicate, beautiful little iris and of course, my favorite color… purple.

I tried to take some with me when I lost the house… and they bloomed the next year in my expensive little rental house in Detroit… but not that good.   And then the second year?  They died.

Last year, I missed the sale…  well, I was still living in Detroit, so, I wasn’t around.

And then when I bought the Moby in June of 2008… it was just so much work to make it livable… flowers were not in my plans really and it wasn’t till the end of the season that I got to put in some late perenials, that were discounted and kinda scraggly looking, but hey, nearly all survived…

So this spring.. I was READY!

What was so wonderful is that my girls came with me and when we got to the parking lot, they ducked off and were all giggly and then raced up to me and had $40 and said they wanted me to buy some irises for Mother’s Day from them…  they had schemed it all and saved the cash… awwwwwww….  nothing like bear hugging your favorite two teenagers in the world at the plant show and having a little more coin to really whoop it up!!!

I got 6 beautiful gallon pots of the Siberian Iris!!!   I can’t wait to plant them tomorrow.   I also got a purple tie-dye Clemetus that I have to figure out where I want to climb and be beautiful… and a pair of Jacob’s Ladders…  a beautiful large plantain Hosta for a shady spot…  and a fern…. and a beautiful delicate little Bleeding Heart for Maggie, because she loves those…  and a little pot of muskmellon starts…  and also a pair of gallon potted purple tall plants that their name escapes me…  (not salvia, but just a really  nice plant… tall and purply small flowers….)  what a great haul of beautiful plants!

I can’t wait to plant them….  we tucked them under a shelter by the front door… and I’ll be dreaming about where my beauties will go tomorrow morning…  sigh…

I think I would have planted them this afternoon but I had a concert to go to… a Frank Sinatra song tribute concert by my friend Frank…  yes, that’s his name too! And I’ll tell ya all about that later on…

Happy Mother’s Day to all you out there and I hope you have a lovely weekend of Motherhood Bliss!

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