Riches in the Ditches

Beauty is truly found in unsuspecting places.  All you gotta do is have your eyes open to see it and appreciate it. I think I've already told this story, but every year I see it and it reminds me.  About 24 years ago I was farming rice on our family farm.  I distinctly remember driving my truck down a gravel road between Carrier Road and Cotton Gin Road.  I was on my way to check the irrigation well we called the "big well."  It pumped cool, clear water from 180 feet below the flat, hot surface above.  

The well, powered by a big engine with straight pipes, was loud.  It roared.  The horsepower of that engine was impressive, lifting columns of water from the underground aquifer to the rice field where the fields were kept with a good flood of 6 inches of water for months.  Rice likes its feet wet.  When you got out of the truck, the noise of the engine would hurt your ears.  If you went at night time to check the oil in the engine or make sure that the dripper was still dripping hydraulic oil to lubricate the bearings, the manifold would glow cherry red. 

On this particular day, it was around noon.  It was a sultry summer day.  The air heavy with humidity, the mosquitoes buzzing, hungry for a feast of blood from some unsuspecting beast or man.  The sun beat down in punishing fashion.  As I was about to turn in, I noticed it in the ditch.  It was a clump of beautiful flowers.  Now, I'm not a flower guy, not a bit.  But it was hard not to admire this flower.

The Louisiana Iris.  It's the state wildflower of Louisiana.  The state flower of Louisiana is the magnolia flower.  It's flower is pure white, with a fresh, clean fragrance that you can't stop sniffing to get just one more scent in your nostrils.  The downside is that if you cut it off the tree to bring it inside, it turns brown very quickly, as if to communicate that it's better to leave it on the tree and admire its beauty in the outdoors.  The Louisiana iris is a vibrant purplish blue color, the color of royalty.  It has hints of deep gold that accent its beauty.  

How could something so beautiful be in a ditch and not in a manicured garden?  Because, like rice, the Louisiana iris likes its feet wet and what needs beauty more than a roadside ditch?  A couple decades ago, every rice farmer worth his salt had a Pony #2 shovel with an ash handle in the bed of his pickup truck sharpened to a razor edge to cut through levees and the tough leathery bodies of the cottonmouth moccasin, our arch enemy in the rice fields.

I pulled my shovel out of the back of the truck and walked to the ditch, pushing the ubiquitous empty beer can floating in the muddy water out of the way.  I dug deep into the soft mud and scooped out a big scoop of mud, making sure I had all the roots of the iris.  I had to rescue it and bring it to our new home 30 miles north.  I did leave some behind, though, as that roadside ditch needed beautification as well.

I planted it in a low area where a ditch on our property carries rainwater.  It always stays sort of wet and I figured it would be a good home for the Louisiana Iris, bringing beauty to our home.  And it has.  Each year, I look on it and smile and remember finding it.  The iris has thrived, multiplying and filling the ditch.  It blooms each April, never disappointing.  The wife and I always look for its blooms and announce to each other when the first bloom appears.

We even used a shovel to move some of it near the sidewalk on our back patio.  It announced its happiness to be in that location by spreading quickly to fill that bed.  Now we can enjoy it in two locations - the back patio and the ditch that runs through the grove.

We enjoy their blooms while they last.  Soon their beauty fades, however.

But we're left with the anticipation of the blooms next April, signaling spring and bringing back remembrances of finding riches in the ditches.