It's early September, a truly gorgeous day. The temperatures are hovering around 70, unusual for a late summer western Kentucky day but the gift of the recent hurricane that bounced around on the Atlantic coast. We got its winds and its cool but we didn't get its rain.
I have four very mature trees on my lot, very mature because I planted the three maples in the 70's and the cottonwood on the boundary line was a mature tree already, even at that time. The cottonwood is quite huge and a bit scary during times like the year of the Ice Storm of the Century, 2009. If it had dropped just one more ice laden limb on the kitchen corner of my house, the kitchen, deck and garage would no longer be. I would probably no longer be either.
But it shades my house from the setting sun every afternoon and setting suns can be brutal in this part of the state.
However, here it is the first week of September and the cottonwood is undressing all over my back and side yard. It's dry. It. Is. Dry. I'm not complaining, because there are those of my friends who are in such drought that fires are a continual threat. And I worry for them. And pray. And if I had a drop of rain I would give it to them before taking it for myself. But for many of us, there are no drops of rain.
It was only a few months ago that we were sandbagging against flooding rivers and hoarding drinking water because the flood waters were threatening the pumps of the city water plant. And it was only a few months ago that my irises and roses and daylilies were standing in water from an oversaturated ground. Yet they bloomed all summer long.
One day at a time, I tell myself. We make do with what has been given us, Aunt Bett always said. Nature will take care of herself, said Granny Ninna.
As I watch the seasons play tag with each other, as I watch them change from what I once knew to the unpredictable, I keep reminding myself, we are the earth's caretakers. It is what it is and I will make do. Without complaint. Maybe.
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It grows near the butterfly bush up on the little hill in my back yard. The question of its familial ties never bothered me until recently when it suddenly became a show stopper with its mass of blooms and neon red color.
"What's that plant?" they asked?
'Hibiscus'.
"Where'd you get it?"
'Up the head of the holler where I grew up'.
"I need that, do you ever divide the roots?"
'Well no, but here's a seed or two'.
Somebody told me it was a Texas Star, so that's what I called it when I posted pictures of it on various sites. That was years ago and of course there were those who disputed my naming of it.
Well, shoot. I had no clue what it was except it was the hibiscus that used to grow in Granny Ninna's yard. I don't know where she got it, who gave it to her, or when. It just grew in her yard. Sometime in the 80's I brought it home with me.
Then I realized I couldn't just keep calling it Texas Star unless I wanted arguments every time I wrote its name. I thought maybe I ought to be better informed.
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First I had it in the front yard, but the trees grew and so did the shade. I moved it to the back where it got all day sun. It grew and bloomed and in the meantime I got a start of my Great Gramma Combs' pink hibiscus. They didn't have the same leaves at all but I planted the pink one near the red one because it seemed to be a good spot. I just left them alone to grow, side by side.
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They said: "What's that pink bloom?"
'Hibiscus'.
"And the red one is?"
'Hibiscus.'
"They can't be the same, they have different leaves!"
'True.'
So I decided I needed to do a little research.
I googled 'red hibiscus'. I got Texas Star, and realized it wasn't the same.
I googled 'red halberd leafed hibiscus.'
OK, that made a difference, I got Hibiscus laevis, but it doesn't come in red. It's colors are white all the way to a dark pink color, but no red.
It's a cool plant, but then I like all of the hibiscus, no matter the color. This one just happens to have the skinny pointed halberd leaf foliage which makes it almost too dainty and feminine for an 8'+ tall plant. Was it the Hibiscus militaris? So named because of the shield - look of its leaf? Don't know.
Scarlet Rose Mallow? Nope, the leaves are wrong.
Butterflies and hummers love it. So do various bees.
Red shield? Maybe, but I'm not sure. It's an old plant, years old, because it grew in Granny Ninna's yard for such a long time. We lost her in '78, and it had been established for years even then. So I don't know.
There's a distinct separation of its 5 bloom petals, and it is huge; maybe as big as 10 inches. It sure does put on a show.
Like all hardy hibiscus, it dies back in winter. I save the seeds to give away, and leave the others to fall and spread, but it has kept close and though I have a full bushy growth most years, last year in our drought it was a couple of skinny stalks with a bloom or two here and there. It wasn't even worth talking about and I truly thought I'd lost it.
Not so as you can see in the first picture.
It isn't as though I obsessively need to know its name. It's always going to be Granny Ninna's hibiscus. But I've had it for so many years and every single year somebody says, 'What's that plant?'
And I say, "Hibiscus".
Wouldn't it be fun if, before it or I -- either of us -- decides it's time to fade into oblivion, wouldn't it be fun if I could tell somebody its proper name?
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Somebody said: God gave us memories so we could see roses in December.
Or something like that.
When December comes along, this blog should help, my mind is already pretty muddled with its accumulation of memories. It needs all the help it can get.
I haven't added to my garden this year, unless you count those few things I added last fall. Like the hydrangea a friend gave to me. I told her I had no room, she gave it to me anyway and then went ahead and planted it. It grew in spite of me and now, somehow, also in spite of me it's blooming. Tiny little thing, and white. I have no idea if it's one that will change color with the soil content, but now that it has my attention I might just help it along a little bit. We'll see.
The roses took off in April, right about the time the rains came in swift torrents, deluges, floods. And while my little town was fighting off the raging Tennessee River, the roses just kept on blooming and thriving while very nearly floating, even those I'd given up for dead during the drought last summer. Yay for the roses.
The irises weren't too happy with all the water, so I had very few blooms from many of them. And tulips.
Anyway...here I am surrounded by daylilies that have been blooming since late May. Amazing things, I weedwhacked them down to the ground last August, the drought had turned them various shades of brown, they were an ugly sight. Then the rains came and now their blooms seem neverending. I want to remember them when the winds blow brown and gray in winter. Some have no names, except those that I gave them. They are that old. There's Uncle Bill's Red, Bette's huge ruffled yellow, Ninna's pale yellow, Gramma's burgandy, and Aunt Bett's orange. Purple Paw Print from a friend who once lived in California, and the pale one th
at reminds me of moonlight that came from New York. I had a map one time that told me all their names...if I could only find that map because the tags were lost in the floods/ice/drought of the past few years. And so I have daylilies, old friends blooming all over my gardens.
And what's to come? Butterfly bushes and coneflowers and garden phlox and still more roses, crocosmia and sedum and balloon flowers. I haven't seen a sign of last year's mums.
