While wandering the internet this morning, I accidentally ran across the

literary reference that Neil Mogensen was making when he called my iris

patch the "slough of despond".  It morphed from there to the "vale of

despair", or as KK calls it, "iris hell".

It's from Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress!
Wiki:
'This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is
the descent 
whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth

continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond: for 
still
as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth 
in his soul
many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, 
which all of them get
together, and settle in this place; and this is 
the reason of the badness of
this ground.'

I didn't realize at the time that it was anything other than
general 
"humor".  So for those of you who are long time iris-talk readers, I

thought I'd share. ;-)

Lots of damage out there from the freeze last? week,
week before?, but 
some things are attempting to send up stalks, especially in
the rows I 
covered.

Linda Mann
east TN frost pocket zone 7
USA

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