Before the time for Azalea Trails, camellias are the pride of southern yards. I could match the litany of names with blooms: a pink ruffled Debutant and a tightly formed red Professor Sergeant. White Alba Plena were my bridal bouquet. Guarding our driveway were two tall bushes of Sarah Frosts. Mother’s love was the Purple Dawn Daddy grafted just for her.
Daddy patiently worked through the process of grafting, requiring that I learn the steps. He bought a small susanqua bush to be the root stock. After time for it to settle in place, he brought home a scion from a friend’s Purple Dawn. The bark was peeled back on the susanqua, the scion was cut on the diagonal and brushed with grafting compound and placed inside the peeled bark and the two wrapped together with fine string. The combination was covered with a glass jug and a cardboard box propped by a stick to help create moisture and give protection from cold or too much sun. The stick was replaced by a brick and then an upended flower pot.
Eventually, a tiny green shoot came from the scion. The graft had taken. The grafted bush grew in place for several years before being moved to a raised bed near the back porch steps. Over thirty years time, the bush grew as tall as the roof of the porch and produced five inch blooms with a rose heart that deepened to almost black at the edges.
Blooms were gathered and scattered through the house to float in crystal bowls. Mother sent me back to college with several flowers nestled in tissue paper in a Maison Blanche suit box. She even brought a box to Houston each time they visited.
Time passes. Daddy died. Mother moved to a nursing home and eventually we had to sell the house. Our sons came to help me clean out belongings. I went to spend the night with a childhood friend. The next morning, in the chill of pre-dawn, I remembered one unfinished task. I turned on Linden Ave and drove down the gravel driveway of 115., stopping by a big bush. I broke off several limbs laden with heavy blooms. I didn’t have a suit box, so I laid them gently on clothes in the back seat. That night, at home in Houston, Purple Dawns floated once more in a crystal bowl.
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
Matt 6:28 – 29
Let Me Tell Ya 