Iris Show

Can you imagine the scent of iris filling a room, people humming around blooms like drunken bees, too enchanted by sweetness to let a grain of bitter cling to their faces? I can. The memory is like pollen gathered unintentionally by the circumstance of movement through the day, of a moment when I felt a weight clinging, pulling me into an awareness- that everyone in the room was transformed by blooms. Not one up-turned face soured the fragrance of the air. People smiled, talked among strangers like old friends sharing treasure stashed in stalks of color.
The iris club I belong to, Louisville Area Iris Society, recently had a show and sale. I had the privilage of sitting in that room a good part of the day, tending to various duties. It didn't take long to feel my own mood shift, lighten as if I were one of those molecules of sweet floating around the room.
There is an intangible fact about gardeners- they are generous with themselves, their plantings, their seeds, as if sowing gratitude into earth. I think it's because they sow themselves into the day bent on their kness, fingers working through soil like awls -traces left on their hands clasping another's like a gift.