Dahlias

BIW is building the next generation of warships -- the DDG 1000 -- and today a huge barge brought a piece upriver. It's all pretty secret. The patrol boat continues, as it has for many years, to look for bearded men in kafiyas who are going to blow up the tug Kennebec. Anyway, the barge came upriver while I was manually rototilling a small bed for the dahlias that Marnie bought yesterday.
I hate dahlias. When I was in junior high, I used to make some money working for Mrs. K______, who lived catty-corner across the street from us. I mowed her lawn, raked, weeded.... and cared for her precious freaking dahlias. Mrs. K______ was a prodigious consumer of Four Roses, but in the late morning she was at the top of her game, and she would come down and supervise my work, which (as I remember) was never up to her standards. Dahlias are delicate things, it seems, and they require a lot of care and love. Not my strongest suit in junior high. Well, let's see how Marnie's dahlias do. My part is done, and by now the barge is docked at BIW. Lovely sunny day, anyway.