My friend Tamara is what you might call an obsessive. That’s putting it gently, if you know what I mean. Once she identifies an area of interest, she won’t rest until she’s a card-carrying expert on the subject, even if of the armchair variety. Whether it’s cider brewing, the cultural history of playing cards or some obscure genre of French-Japanese animation, she’ll pursue all available knowledge in a field until there’s no more left to learn about it, then discard it – much to my annoyance, as by that time I’ve usually just started to come around to it.
Anyway, the latest target of her ravenous impulse for learning is iris cultivation. I must say, this is one of the less batty things she’s gotten into of late, and I’m quite happy to encourage it. In fact, I wouldn’t be too bothered if she cultivated some unusual irises in the swampy bed down the bottom of my garden, should she feel so inclined. Personally, I don’t have the time or energy to devote to such a project, but if Tamara wants to take charge of it, that’d be just swell.
Of course, there’s every chance she’ll get over it before it’s halfway complete, but she does have a track record of sticking with things for at least a fortnight. Setting up an iris bed surely can’t take longer than that, especially if attacked with the obsessive gusto I know Tamara to be capable of. It’s simply a matter of convincing her to chuck in a couple of other flowering shrubs, so I don’t end up with a homogeneous bed of nothing but irises. I’m sure she’ll comply if it can be shown that there’s some benefit to it that can be enjoyed by her flower of choice.
That’s the kind of thing she should be figuring out herself, though. What kind of obsessive would she be if she didn’t cover that information in the course of her studies?