Parable of My Hydrangea Bush

You might consider this a belated Earth Day reflection.

The hydrangea bush inhabited another part of our yard here in Atlanta, but I moved it to a more prominent place so passersby could enjoy its blooms, between the sidewalk and the street. A rookie mistake.

I should have learned from the azaleas I had once planted in a similar location that disappeared, roots and all, the night before they were about to blossom. My optimism hoped, at least, as it was near Mother’s Day, that someone had taken them home to his mother.

I had just prepared our lunch when a knock at the door summoned me. A young man pleasantly complimented the hydrangea and asked if he and his wife might take a slip or two home to grow for themselves. “Sure,” I said, and trusted him to do this on his own without supervision.

But during lunch, my intuition or lack of trust kicked in and I went to check on my hydrangea just as the man grasped one last handful of stalks, tossing them in a bucket of water with others previously pruned and slamming the rear doors of his white truck as he jumped behind the steering wheel for a sheepish but quick getaway. To my dismay, I realized a florist had just made off with half of the hydrangea’s colorful blossoms. I shouted after him, but too late.

The following season, I called my mother one morning to proudly tell her how beautifully the hydrangea was blooming. She was pleased to hear of it, because we had one in the yard of the home I grew up in, and in which she still lived. My father had tended it, as he had all our plants and trees and lawns. Dad’s family had a farm, and she was pleased to think I had gotten his “farmer” genes.

Later that same morning, I came out on the front porch and noticed the hydrangea’s branches were drooping, dangerously low. I had earlier watered the lawn, so I inspected the plant to see if too much water had accumulated on the leaves, weighing it down. I saw a neighbor outside and asked if he had noticed anything unusual.

“Yeah,” he said, “A drunk guy collapsed on it a little while ago.” I had earlier noticed him stumbling near his truck, still parked nearby, broken down or out of gas in the middle of the street. Now he was nowhere to be found, presumably seeking help or buying fuel, but he had carefully dumped his used beer cans on the adjacent lot. Uncharitably I collected the cans and put them in the bed of his truck. My sense of justice was piqued!

I had other seasons when the hydrangea would return wonderfully from its winter dormancy, but the final insult came one winter when someone removed what he thought was a dead plant: my hydrangea! I was grieved and horrified, but I bit my lip and said nothing, because the person thought he was doing me a favor.

It reminded me of the time I saved a tree in front of my ground floor apartment’s picture window in West Hollywood. I enjoyed watching squirrels playing in it and birds nesting among the branches, like a Disney cartoon. Sometimes at night possums huddled near its trunk, pretending not to be there as I passed by. But one winter, the building’s maintenance guy came with saws and tools to take it down. I intervened, asking why. “Because it’s dead,” he declared, “It has no leaves.” I explained that the tree always lost leaves in the winter, and they grew back in the spring. “Oh,” he said, and was just as happy not to take it down.

Ok, so now I’m an old man rambling, but one more shrub story. I had a painfully prickly bush at the end of our driveway, again, here in Atlanta. A drunk apparently attacked that too, as I found tire marks in its garden bed and a major portion broken off, but carefully placed back in position as if nothing happened. I only discovered the subterfuge when that section turned a telltale brown. When it finally died, I decided, once and for all, to remove it. Big mistake! I had no idea how the bush had become my “North star,” guiding me as I backed out of our curved driveway. I’ve never been as good backing out onto the street since! Now I look like a drunk driver!

For all you biblical sharpies out there, you know that a “parable,” such as I have labelled this, is only supposed to have one point. The point being our relationship with nature.

But as many parables are interpreted allegorically, there’s more to the story. We exploit and even take credit for nature’s beauty. Our addictions plunder, pollute, displace, and even destroy it, and this includes coffee, sugar, cocaine, fossil fuels, urban sprawl, as well as a disproportionate distribution of fruits, vegetables, and flowers to the privileged. We fail to be mindful of its rhythms and we fail to fully understand and appreciate it.

And prickly, annoying shrubs, like prickly, annoying experiences and prickly, annoying people, may serve as guideposts to finding our way.

Related Link: My grandniece Elaine Sanders, interested in sustainable design, edited this brief recycling video for her campus paper: Beyond the Bin.

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