snow in florida

My grandmother has this crazy snowball bush in her backyard that we used to play under as children - it's half honeysuckle, half snowball, all glorious and fragrant.  My little sister and best friend and I would sit underneath it (since the two halves arched together and created the perfect small cave-space where we could put an old rag rug to sit on) for hours and have tea parties, plot our next adventure, or just lie down and look up at the flowers.  I used to like to put my feet near the roots and shake the branches so the little white petals would flutter down on us like snow and get stuck in our hair.  I think there may be a faded, dog-eared picture of us sitting there, but sadly, haven't been able to locate it.

A few years ago, I was driving through my neighborhood and saw a beautiful hydrangea bush in full bloom.  Since I grew up in the northeast, I am sometimes surprised to see familiar plants here in the south.  The hydrangea, although technically a different plant, reminded me of the snowball bush (which is a viburnum) from my childhood, so I made a mental note that the next time I was motivated enough to tackle my yard improvement project, I should put a snowball bush in and see how it does.  I found one at my local home improvement store, and planted it right on the corner of my house near the driveway, so anybody driving or walking up to the house would one day be greeted with the fluffy, rounded flowers that just begged to be touched and batted around.  I think I particularly liked how the habit of the shrub itself is naturally random.  It doesn't seem to clump or default to a pleasing shape.  It just tends to wander in its growth until it decides, "ok, this is far enough, I'm going to bloom right here right now."  But the clusters are so orderly and predictably round, a perfect counterpoint to the random craziness of the plant itself.

My little snowball had an uphill climb.  I had planted it on a not-very-fertile corner of the driveway, in full view of the scorching sun, also directly in the path of my garden hose, which would frequently get dragged across its pliable branches nearly uprooting it every time.  I guess that wasn't very nice (or smart) of me, since for the first year it just struggled along, barely surviving.  I apologized to it (in my head) regularly, and frequently muttered something about needing to relocate it somewhere safer, but I never did.  I just let it struggle.  This is Florida, folks.  You usually don't need to encourage plants here.  Upon asking a friend about the secret to his beautiful gardens, he advised me, "you don't have to work at the growing part.  You have to get yourself a machete and cut away anything you DON'T want growing with regularity, or the weeds WILL take over the plants you DO want."  He was right.

It eventually did get a little bit larger, but it was spindly and awkward-looking, and never bore flowers.  I was ok with the diminutive size, but always disappointed to never see those glorious clusters of fluff.

But the saying is true that strong storms make trees grow deeper roots.  After a year or so of watching the little guy struggle, I emerged from my winter hibernation (ok, I don't really hibernate, and it's not really 'winter' like we have in the NE, but I do go through a period of time every year where I completely ignore the plant life on my property) and looked at the corner where the poor thing was usually slouched over, clinging to life.   

I had to look twice, because where I had planted a little scraggly bush was now a soaring, tree-like plant!  It was immense, easily more than ten times it's previous size.  I stared in awe, trying to figure out exactly how and when that crazy growth spurt had happened.  I also had thoughts like, "Hmm. I had really wanted something more short and shrubby.  I don't know if this fits the look I was going for."  But far be it from me to tell Mother Nature how to do her job, so I just kept an eye on it, anxiously awaiting for the much-anticipated blooms, and making sure the branches didn't interfere with my new gutters.

I tried to appreciate it for what it is for nearly a year, never giving up hope that I would once again have handfuls of my favorite childhood flowers.  I watered it every time I thought about it, always anticipating the result I had planned for, only bigger and better now that it had taken off.

Unfortunately, what I think happened is that this was a grafted plant, and the grafted cultivar (snowball) had probably died off during the difficult first year, and only the hardy (but ugly) rootstock lived on.  Once the rootstock didn't have to worry about supporting the invading scion, it was able to grow deep, strong roots and start reaching for the sky.  

For months, I tried to value the ugly, crazy-looking wild rootstock I had received and apparently nurtured into existence instead of pining away for the compact, flowered shrubby plant of my expectations.  I waited and waited, and it grew and grew.  It started to invade my new gutters.  It hampered guests from fully opening their car doors when parked anywhere near it.  Its leaves started to look worse for the wear, with rusty-colored spots and ragged yellow edges.  Apparently, it was no longer thriving after that initial growth spurt.  It may have outgrown the resources available to support it.  Maybe there was too much sun, burning its tender leaves.  Not enough nutrients in the sand-heavy soil, causing the infertility which deprived me of my long-awaited flowers.  I realized that this was not fair to the plant.  It had done the best that it could with what it had been given.  I had thought it was going to be one thing, but when it became another, I realized it was a bit too much for me and I wasn't willing to put more resources into this bastardization of my initial plan.  I felt bad doing it, but I cut it down today.  That corner looks empty, but also clean.  No more ragged leaves and invading branches sullying the view.  I'll have to get used to it though.  And now I know better than to expect something to survive in conditions it wasn't really meant for.  Next time, I'll make sure it's not a grafted plant but grown from seed, and I'll plant it where it will have the shade it needs and plenty of water, not just when I remember to give it some out of guilt over the unfair struggle I've put it through. 

As with all of my writing, even though the above is 100% true, it served as yet *another* metaphor that actually brought me some enlightenment today.  [Before you get hopeful and excited for me, know that enlightenment is not an additive, happy-making process, as I learned this week on  Pinterest.  It is the stripping away of untruth to reveal what actually IS, like it or not.]   The non-relationship I just had that ended so sadly in flames is a really good parallel.  

He and I had entered into a kind of agreement about what 'we' would be, foolishly thinking we were in charge and could control it, limit it.  The setting was fertile for something, but maybe not what we wanted.  So rather than the predictable, acceptable experience we were expecting, something else took hold and grew when neither of us was looking.  When I did take a peek and realized, "oh, shit.  This thing is bigger than me now.  I can't control this!", I didn't really know what to do with it.  So instead of calling his attention to it so we could deal with it together (probably because I knew that could be an early ending to something I was still hoping would turn out ok), I just kept trying to enjoy it for what it was since it didn't seem to bother him too much.  I didn't want to point out just how big it had gotten in case he realized it was something that probably needed pruning, or worse.  Thinking we would eventually appreciate it for what it had become, I kept watering and nurturing it.  Problem was, water isn't enough.  It needed some vital nutrients that just weren't there. That patch of soil hadn't been prepared to support something so big and so needy.  There wasn't space for it.  I gave it too much sun and instead of soaking it up, it shriveled at the too-hot touch of something it didn't want.  It's not that it wasn't a perfectly good plant, it just wasn't the plant that we were expecting, and that wasn't the appropriate place for it.  It wasn't my fault or his fault.  Sometimes the timing or placement in life is just off, and you have to decide if you're going to try to be a slave to this thing that just kind of grew out of hand, or if you're going to realize that even though it seems wasteful and maybe even heartless to just cut it down, it wasn't living its best life anyway, and may never have had the resources it needed to become what either of us was looking for it to be.  (Its roots were far too deep to dig up and relocate, in case you were wondering.  Plus, that doesn't work with the whole 'love' metaphor.  I can't just take the feelings I have for him and turn them elsewhere.)  

Yes, it was hard to cut down.  It took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears on my part (don't worry, the blood is pure metaphor here, the sweat and tears entirely too real).  I have never had to do this before, kill something this big that had grown out of control of its own accord, and therefore I do not have the appropriate tools in my shed.  I had to find what I could and hack away at it.  I ended up using a mitre saw, which is ill-suited to the task.  The blade is too thick, the teeth spaced too closely.  It was an ugly, frustrating, violent and manual process.  There is still the stump and the root, I haven't found a way to get rid of the most stubborn parts yet.  I know that eventually, it will either find enough resources and decide to grow again or it will rot and die.  

I'm not going to fool myself into thinking I can predict which one it will do, nor am I foolish enough to hope for one or the other.  

But this is Florida, folks.