Harry Hibiscus
It wasn’t that my garden was bare. There were of course the sun-dried grasses and weeds struggling in various phases of growth and death on the ‘lawn’. But in addition there were rudbeckia (known as black-eyed Susans), some survivor sunflowers and some revenant Sweet William. Varieties of aster were leafy but not yet in flower.
Every year I’ve vowed to purchase a hibiscus and plant it lovingly by the hedge, watching it survive hot summers and thrive, just like ones along paths in the south of France – indomitable survivors. And every year, hauling bags of rich ‘or noir’ from the garden center I vowed that next visit would include this plant that seemed to grow everywhere but in my garden. I forgot each time, sidetracked by Canary Island date palms (with untrimmed dried fronds), tempting baby olive trees. I’d buy another hydrangea.
This year was different – I brought home a reddish-leaved plant that looked resistant to parching sun, flood or neglect in hard soil. My type of guy.
The summer was criminally hot, and his reddish leaves drooped if he was not watered. Sensitive and temperamental he went from bright enthusiastic outreach on cool, watered days to threatening us with his imminent demise on most days.
This guy was not a survivor of Provençal sun, a casual splash of color living out thirty years by an old fence. He was a sensitive soul, grown in some greenhouse in the Département de l’Ain. Had I not done my homework and read his small print? No, I hadn’t, just as I hadn’t read the small print when I brought my babies home from the hospital. I would wing it as mothers do, realizing that offspring never follow the expected monthly patterns in development laid out in popular books. I would follow instinct.
Instinct told me to use organic fertilizer and water him twice daily. He appeared to enjoy this, and his red leaves blushed and thrived.
Then one day a flamboyant pink flower emerged. Triumph! Beauty!
By the next day it was a memory, collapsed like a dead butterfly on a stem. One iphone photo was the only proof I had of this flash fecundity.
*****
For late August vacation I’ve had to give him in garden custody to a gentle but baffled Colombian, who believes that house-cleaning is vastly preferable to working the soil.
I’d like to think that Harry will be cherished, fed and watered by his temporary custodian, his brilliant flowers heralded by passers-by.
