Aly Angell

Sometimes the hardest moments come at the weirdest times. I will fully admit I'm a procrastinator. I put the pro in it sometimes. The iris didn't care that I procrastinated yet again about getting them planted or moved. I did though. My heart always sinks worrying about if they'll bloom again, every time we move and I replant them. They're my great grandmas, but really they're probably her great grandmas before her. My Dad helped save bulbs from her farm in Missouri, along with the Colonel. We had them under the trees at my childhood home and my Dad saved bulbs and brought them to our backyard of the house in Lakeview as a teenager. When I moved back to KS in 2014 and bought my first house in 2016, here came Dad to plant iris all around the property. They bloomed the next year with passion. In fact, they bloomed so well we had to split them and move some around. In the cold pitch of October 2022 when we realized we might be moving, I had to dig to save the bulbs. See Dad had forgotten to take bulbs to his new house during their move, so I was the last keeper of the iris. There we were on a crisp morning with half a dozen plastic pots, repotting iris, crossing our fingers it would work. I left two pots with my Dad to plant in his yard, which he did...and in January of that year, 4 pots of 4 bulb clusters each, incubating in the soil, moved across the country to NC. That spring, we planted them in the front yard where an animal ate them, and in a raised bed, where they flourished! Last summer, while our house was up for sale the first time. I transplanted to the new house. This week was the first bloom. Finally. ...and today, I thought about Dad and the iris. He told me to not wait to do the things I dream of and not stop telling people I love them, because there will come a time when it could all end. So today in my procrastination of everything, I'm reminded to keep pushing myself to dream of what's next and send you all love.

Today's grief: "You'd think I'd get better at this, but I'm not" ... And, "I just needed to send this picture to you today, but I couldn't"