the dirt

Yesterday, I went to a friend's house to help her plant some flowers. She could not plant her own flowers because she had recently had a hip replaced. She is a very wise person - she fed me first and then we tackled the task of planting the flowers.
I thought this would be easy - dig a few holes in the ground, stick in plants and presto-chango, we are done. But there would be no digging in the ground - we were planting the several thousand (I might be exagerating) species of flowers in containers - aka large pots - None of the containers were prepared - that means they did not have dirt and stones in them. There was a large container of dirt and two more bags of dirt - aka potting soil. So I went about the task of filling the containers with this dirt and stones and flowers.
After the first ten containers, it became painfully obvious that there were not enough stones or dirt. The stones were easy to find - the ground was littered with them (perhaps there had been an attempt to landscape with them in an earlier lifetime as they were pretty stones - nice and white and sparkly). No matter, they were now drainage plugs and as such were buried. The dirt was a different matter. I left that task to Beverly and my friend. They had to fight traffic, crowds, and roving gangs of teenage skateboarders from hell. I was staying put, keeping watch of the thousand pound containers full of flowers - no one would steal them on my watch.
A cup of coffee and a visit to the water closet - aka the john - I sat down and began to enjoy the afternoon's stillness. Suddenly, Bev reappeared and said I should quick get the dirt from the car before anyone sees. I did as she said because she can get mean and I did not want to chance that. I noticed that the getaway car was in the garage and the garage was closed. I thought I heard a siren but I could have been mistaken. I emptied the trunk and carried the two bags (I wondered if that was enough) to the back yard which was fortunately fenced in on all sides - six foot high solid wood fence. Bev and my friend were looking suspicious and out of breath. They were taking some hard drinks from their bottled water.
I said that was fast and Bev replied Yeah fast. She gave me a you-don't-want-to-know look, so I assumed that I did not. I took the dirt and began to fill the next hundred containers. And wouldn't you know it - we ran out of dirt. It was at that moment that my friend's roommate showed up. "Is there anything I can do?" he said. So we sent him out for more dirt and never saw him for the rest of the day. A few margaritas took away any trace of the guilt I might have had. All in all it was a good planting day.
Frank