A Splash of Wonder from Nubs of Nothing

Well, I'm still alive.  And it's wonderful.  While I'm not quite ready, like Simeon in the New Testament after glimpsing the baby Jesus, to pray, "Lord, let me now depart in peace, for my eyes have seen..." I do feel like something of a milestone has been reached.  I suppose that in the grand scheme of things it isn't all that important, but I would call it wondrous -- and something of divinity within my reach.

When the nursery man first handed it to us at the store -- a pot of soil with two short protruding nubs -- I asked pessimistically if I would still be alive by the time it finally had anything to show for itself.  He didn't so much answer as merely knowingly smile. 

Since that day it has hardly been left to itself.  We have been attentive, and more or less patient.  It has grown -- surprisingly so -- from those two little nubs into a nascent stalks and eventually into bush-like proportions.  A few weeks ago buds appeared -- barely berry-size, but there dotting the branches.  Day by day they swelled -- prune-sized, and then more.  And then something began to peek out from the tips of the buds -- a purple so deep is was almost black.  Then time, it seemed, stood still.  It was as though after all that climbing, a plateau had been reached and all creation would have to wait while it gathered in its second breath necessary to finally reach that vista.  Or having crowned, a rest before birth's final push.

I have a love/hate relationship with patience.  Anticipation can almost consume me -- which is wonderful when planning a vacation.  That is the very reason we choose to plan them so far in advance; that way we get to enjoy the trip over and over again -- before we even begin it.  The trip itself becomes less the main event than the sorbet at the end of an already glorious meal.  But that kind of distractedness is not all that great when other matters demand some of that attention -- like work.  That, and I am only in my old age beginning to make peace with this notion of delayed gratification.  So it is that I have both hated and loved these months of anticipation.  All this time, and in the face of driving rain and ferocious winds, I have watched and watered and worried and waited and fed and frequently fretted over this fragile, emergent life; anxious to finally behold its floral denouement.

Waited, that is, until yesterday afternoon.  When I left for a meeting early in the morning I could see that something was different.  Looking back, I suppose it had finally emerged, but not yet opened.  Returning home later in the day, the distractions finally satisfied, we crept back to the soil bed beside the house.

And smiled...

...a delight that, given the swarm of surrounding buds...

...is the first of many to come.

Steady Progress and a Proud Beginning

Our stub-of-a-hibiscus is making steady progress.  Still weeks -- if not months -- away from putting out any blossoms (the "plate-sized" marvels promised us by the salesman), it has nonetheless impressively climbed a foot or so out of the ground, showing no signs of wearying.

In the meantime, the stand-in on the deck offered up this morning its first contribution of the season.  A lovely color, and like any good flowering plant, unabashedly proud of itself.

Opened to the Prospects of this Day

Ever since experiencing them in their quintessential South Pacific habitat, we have potted a hibiscus plant on our deck.  Something about the blossoms -- whether pink or red or yellow or even orange -- is calming; soothing; slowing, like life in that island paradise.  The flowers open unreservedly; full face -- not so much as horticultural exhibitionists but rather echoing Eden's naive hospitality to the moment, as if to absorb anything and everything the sun or the clouds or the activities nearby might have to offer.  That's precisely the way we experienced the people of the islands -- present, open, attuned to each particular moment, recognizing that this moment is all we really have.  It is a strangely attractive, yet uncomfortably disorienting perspective for westerners like us bred and formed to plan and prepare and anticipate, occasionally remember, and live virtually anywhere except the present tense.  The very idea, for two people whose mother's milk was the Protestant Work Ethic, tempted us as something alluringly, almost borderline immoral.  We haven't been able -- actually, even remotely willing -- to let go of the idea.  What seemed so natural for those we met there among the blossoms has come to represent for us almost a spiritual discipline.

And so each spring we go out in search of the perfect hibiscus plant that can anchor the view on our deck; a reminder; an incentive. 

So it was that a week ago, while gathering a few extra bedding plants for the pots and the planter boxes, we kept our eyes open.  Unsuccessful, we finally asked an employee who showed us these bucket sized pots full of soil from which protruded a single wooden stub about 2-inches high.  Looking at our helper with barely veiled skepticism I asked, "Will I even still be alive by the time this thing puts out blossoms?" 

With the same kind of expression I'm guessing beamed from the face of the guy who traded Jack a handful of bean seeds for the family cow with the promise that they would produce a beanstalk that would reach to the clouds, the employee assured us that this perennial would be far superior to puny little plants with which we were more familiar.  "Blossoms the size of plates," he told us.  Fine, I thought.  If I live that long.

Nevertheless, we bought it; stuck it not in a pot on the deck but in the ground where it will supposedly reappear year after year after year in all its plate-sized blossoming glory.  And I will say that in the week since that planting already a sprig of new growth has emerged from the stump.  "August," he reassured us regarding its flowering.  Fine, but as energizing as anticipation can be, it sort of runs counter to the idea of focusing on the present.  So this weekend we plan to venture out again to the greenhouses in search of something for the pot on the deck -- a hibiscus plant with blossoms perhaps smaller but already opened to the prospects of this day, reminding us that we could be too.