"Her dad taught her about hands. About a dog's paws. Whenever her father was alone with a dog in a house he would lean over and smell the skin at the base of its paw. This, he would say, as if coming away from a brandy snifter, is the greatest smell in the world! A bouquet! Great rumours of travel! She would pretend disgust, but the dog's paw was a wonder! The smell of it never suggested dirt. It's a cathedral! her father had said, so-and-so's garden, a field of grasses, a walk through cyclamen -- a concentration of points of all the paths the animal had taken during the day."

--Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient

We have an area near the back of the yard that is a fenced in compost area, the fence starting to fall down. We want to redo it and put this area to better use, storage. Before we do that I want to transfer all of the flowers that lie in a bed next to it. Last fall I took out a bunch of irises, the tubers so huge and old that they were all above ground. This spring I have been working on the daffodils and tulips, moving them to various areas around the garden. I know tulips don't bloom for too many years but I am taking my chances. Some of the bulbs were a full 2 feet underground, but I am determined to get them all. There was also a beautiful japonica/flowering quince along this fence. John dug and dug last spring and the roots were so far underground that we eventually broke off what we had and called it a day. I love cutting branches of japonica to bring indoors in the spring, but the shrub isn't anything special after it blooms (like forsythia), so I decided to put it in the ground near the back of our lot. I didn't have much hope after I feel like we butchered it getting it out of the ground, but sure enough, it's healthy and growing and blooming this year! One other sprig of the three pieces I planted made it also. What a great surprise to walk to the back of the yard and see this bright spot of red!