You never know what is under the dirt

Yesterday it was put the flower boxes away and clean up the back yard a little bit Day!

Some of you may remember that we have a new dog -- SULU!  My big guy loves plastic.  He likes frozen water bottles.  He chews and shreds the plastic until he gets the ice chunk out and then he is done.  Needless to say the backyard is littered with pieces of plastic.  And he can't figure out that I don't want him to shred my plastic flower pots either.  So - he got a hold of one of my dead planters and spread the dirt all over the concrete patio.  But it had a silver lining.  When I was cleaning up the dirt and washing off the patio, he was running through the hose and got soak and wet.  I think he is part fish.  HE LOVES WATER!  And it gave me a great laugh.

Any who -- back to the deck flower boxes - 

Everything was dead except for a few geranium blossoms.  The rest was twisted, dry and had seen better days.  I was attempting to save the soil so I could use it next year.  In these flower boxes in their hey-day, there were geraniums, pansies and sweet potato (ornamental) vines -- they were very beautiful and brightened up our deck - that is in desperate need of a stain job (subject of another blog perhaps)

While I was pulling up the vines and dumping them in a bucket, I kept getting these purple "tuber potato things".  And I couldn't figure out what in the heck was going on.   The flower boxes are not very big and there is little space for root system let alone POTATOES.  

I was nervous that maybe they were some weird version of a sweet potato that was poisonous.  But Sulu got a hold of one and ate it and he didn't vomit or keel over so they must be okay.

But this got me thinking.  When we are all dried up and think we have served our purpose, (in other words, spent) there is always something under the surface that surprises us.  It is hiding.  No one can see it except us.  And the painful part of pulling the old dry, twisted remains of our previous lives reveal  what is under that surface.

Who knows?  Maybe we all have cute little purple potatoes under all those dead things every one can see.  We just need to do the painful work of removing the old vines and putting it to bed for the Winter and "harvesting" what is underneath.