Destruction precedes creation

This is one of those days where my plans exceeded my strength and reality.  It sounded simple enough: get some mollies inserted into a couple of ceilings to hang the Boston ferns (the two giants which were the one smallish fern you saw me saw in half some time ago, the operation was a success), and divide the bearded iris growing out front and start a new bed of them out back.

First this involved finding my drill.  And the charger -- always better to have a portable if you're up a ladder working on a ceiling, ask me how I know what awful things can happen when you have a long extension cord along there with you -- then charge the drill,  and finally I set to work to drill the starter hole in the ceiling. Which didn't work at first, since I managed to hit a ceiling nail or something that kept going proooooiiing and bouncing my bit off it.  Third attempt lucky, the others can be repaired with something not toothpaste any longer, used to be my go-to spackling material for nailholes, but it's all colored blue now.

Soooooo, I had to take a trip to next town to Home Depot, nearest places for simple hardware purchases having long since vanished, found mollies and correct screwhooks, matched in little purses, no searching necessary. Fine.  Home again, hole a teeny bit too small, needed a different size bit, no measurement on my bit, just the word China, so I enlarged the hole just a bit, figuring it would be okay if I didn't tell any real DIY people.  Which made the hole just a biiiiit too big, so the molly was easily able to escape.

Another hole ensued, and amazingly, worked, and the fern is now firmly in place

and looking pretty grand if I do say so.  Hook needs to be screwed in a bit further but my hands were out of it by this time, so HS will be called on to help next time he's over.  It's safe anyway, just would look better.

One cup of tea later, and I thought I'd better get out front and divide the iris before the shade went away -- later this afternoon the back where they will go will be shady, see my cunning plan here.

And here's why I love pachysandra: 

no sign of the death struggles of the iris not wanting to leave, and the pachy protecting their friends while I dug and pulled and tugged and heaved and jumped on the spade until finally I had a bunch of corms or roots or tubers or whatever they are, and all the pachy jumped right back into place, looked just fine.  A bit heartless when you think about it.

And since my strength may not after all be up to digging a new bed this afternoon, that's what tomorrow was invented for, here is an amazing sight, that out of this horticultural debris

will arise a wonderful bed of purple and white bearded iris next spring, right where I can admire it while I have my morning coffee.
I will not think about the fact that this will have to happen again in a couple of years, iris being keen growers and like iron to dig up.