We bought our first house in 1989, and moved in when our second son was two weeks old. The house came with horrid 1970’s orange wall to wall carpet. It was decidedly unattractive and first on my list of the changes I wanted to make to our new home. We lived in the house three years which was, coincidentally, when we grew tired of the basement flooding every time there was a heavy rain. We ordered white wall to wall carpet to install before putting the house on the market. The carpet was on sale, a good deal, non- refundable. E then started to tear up the icky orange carpet only to discover the upstairs of the house had immaculate hardwood floors. Three years and we could have had gorgeous flooring that whole time and saved the money we spent on carpeting.

E made a reservation at a nice restaurant for a well deserved dinner out next week. It was a really nice idea but, at the end of the day, I still don’t want us to be around potentially unvaccinated people, and the money it would cost to eat in a fancy restaurant could better be spent on, I don’t know, well, yes I do, plants. So we went to town yesterday and bought some nice items for a special dinner and then stopped at the nursery to buy new roses. We chose one yellow climber, and an apricot coloured one and another apricot coloured one. (I couldn’t decide which one to take).

All night last night, I dithered about where I could plant the new roses, looking forward to my day today in the garden. Honestly, I am running out of room for more plants. I wish I could think of a way to expand the garden without E divorcing me.

Once the roses were planted, next on the chore list was to deal with the iris bed. It has been my nemesis for years. The iris themselves have stopped flowering as they are over grown and need to be thinned. Last year, I took some out and scattered them in the main flower garden. They flowered this year and were stunning, whereas those in the original bed did nothing and the area is overgrown with weeds.

Iris, as you know are grown close to the top of the soil and I assumed, since we moved here, that the previous owner took advantage of their growing conditions to plant them, along with a carpet of moss, to cover the rocky shelf which borders the garden. It was time to tear out all of the iris and peel back the moss and maybe repurpose the rock shelf. I thought I could maybe sit the pepper pots out there or maybe some pumpkins in cloth bags. This is the mess I was going to deal with.

I got out my trusty shovel and started to dig and dig and dig. You would not believe it, kids, but what I found was not a rock shelf but a gorgeous bed of healthy soil eighteen inches deep. A new garden bed almost thirty feet long and four feet wide. I am so excited. One minute I am lamenting that I have no more space in the garden for the plants I want to grow and the next minute there is a brand new bed, an empty canvass so to speak, just waiting for some plants. So many choices and ideas of what to do with the space in September, when it is a time more appropriate for moving and dividing plants. In the meantime, the extra pumpkins I am left with after the plant sale can go in there for the summer.

You would think I would have learned my lesson in 1989 to look under the rug of a new home, even if that rug is moss, and it is

in the garden