“If I did that, I would have been in trouble,” Trudy said.
I just had taken a step on our garden path and inadvertently pushed an Iris stalk aside, breaking it off the plant. She was right, although I remained silent to hide my shame. I picked up the stalk and and stood there for a moment and then pointed to it.
“Look,” I said quietly. “There was another blossom coming in a couple days.”
“I would have so been in trouble,” she said.
I tossed the stalk into the messy place where the Spiny Lizards and Stag Beetles certainly roam on hot days, a good place for the stalk to decay, I thought.
That was a few days ago.
Today, as I walked around the yard after the commute home, admiring Texas spring in full bloom, I spotted that stalk. It had not begun to decay, far from it. Instead, that nascent bud that was going to open in a couple days had done so. And there, lying on the ground in the messy place, was an Iris blossom in full bloom: purple and orange, lost among the fallen leaves and Oak pollen tassels and sticks and logs that assemble there.
I can no longer hide my shame. The flower has called me out.