Learning the iris lesson, again

My little patch of irises didn't really bloom this year--I had divided them last year, so it wasn't unexpected. I like how they are a lush, green section of my yard for a large portion of the year, so when I swear I could hear the snails and slugs living it up big in there, I worried a bit. Sure, they were floppy and tangled, but they weren't overgrown, undergrown, wilty, bolted, or any of the other annoying descriptions of some of my other plants. But they were definitely prime mollusk territory, and in my garden, that means ewww.No one will be hiring me for a haircut anytime soon, and now I can not only hear the slugs and snails, I can see them, too. And as a bonus, notice that the painstaking rows and triangles of iris rhizomes I labored over last summer are shot already.
I actually don't know why the insane desire to crew cut the irises comes over me each year. Yeah, I could blame it on the slimy paths criss-crossing the patch, but I suspect it's some other intuition-gone-wrong, as I am certain this isn't necessary, if not even wrong-headed (is that a record for hyphenated words and phrases in one sentence? I think so).

So my little blog project will have served a noble purpose if, in a year, my irises don't look like they're new recruits for the army.