hosting the Rose of Sharon

Because it means so much more than what it is; because hummingbirds love it; because I never had a place to plant one before — I now own something that looks like a dried up bunch of twigs with something that looks dried up straw hanging from their ends. That’s because I sent away for a Rose of Sharon plant rather than tracking down a nursery that already had one a few years old. That’s because I don’t always think things through and I never seem to have time to ride around and shop. That’s because I didn’t want to remember that gardens take years to become what you want them to be. Unless you have loads of cash to pay expensive landscapers and gardeners. Which I don’t.
Oh, I did put in some annuals — again, buying the cheapest flats I could find, which means the flowers are barely budding. Except for the marigolds. I’m going to have lots of marigolds, since the ones I started indoors in peat pots are perkily popping. I like marigolds — pungent in all the senses.
I never really decided where to put the Rose of Sharon either. It needs sun. And there’s no point in putting it in a sunny spot that you can’t see from the garden — which is now really a square smothered in grass seed surrounded by small shale-y rock gardens, a strip of struggling flowering plants, the sides of the house, and a fence that needs to be replaced in front of which I have temporarily planted a planter with ivy and geraniums. I have a feeling that this is going to wind up a “planter” garden.
Except for the Rose of Sharon — which, although now planted in a big pot in a sunny spot, can’t stay there forever.
My task now is to chill out and watch what happens to those twigs. Will they or won’t they?
And, if I can manage to chill, I can allow myself to enjoy the family of chipmunks feasting on the grass seed; the little bird with a striped head that makes him look like mutant chipmunk, and the dozens of other winged creatures who mill around our quickly emptying birdfeeder.
Although it’s hard to chill out with my mother always looking for me to complain about what she can’t find this time. Which is what she’s doing right now.
I can’t wait for that first bloom on my Rose of Sharon.

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