Just before the latest freeze, I cut a dozen pale pink camellias from a shrub in our yard. When we bought this bush, I was told it wasn’t a Pink Perfection; but it, with the palest of pink petals, must be a close cousin. And while the temperatures continued to drop, these beautiful blooms, nestled against their green leaves, floated in a low bowl that had been once belonged to Bob’s folks. This arrangement sitting on our kitchen bar added the kind of warmth not found from heating systems.
While our camellia bushes with deeper pink blossoms have grown tall and have been blooming for months, this particular bush put on multiple buds early, but only one, ever now and then, opened. Then on a very cold day, many of the buds opened all at once displaying their tiny perfect petals. Of all the flowers that grow in a Southern garden, I’m always drawn first to the camellias.
I love to tell this story. Shortly after we moved to Jesup from Dallas, Texas, where I knew camellias only as hothouse flowers sold as precious gems at upscale florists (today, Texas gardeners grow camellias throughout much of the state), I attended a reception sponsored by the Woman’s Society of Christian Service (long before it shortened its name to United Methodist Women) at First Methodist Church (long before it merged with another denomination and added United to its name.) In other words, almost a half century ago, the fellowship hall of this church was beautifully adorned with magnificent arrangements of camellias of all colors professionally arranged in ornate silver containers. And scrumptious finger foods filled silver tray after silver tray.
I was hesitant to join a church that evidently spent so much money on decorations and party food instead of missions. Soon, I learned that the ladies of the church had cut the blooms from their yards, and expert gardeners everyone, had arranged their flowers in family heirlooms. After the reception, the members of the decorating committee took their own flower arrangements home. I began to take notice of the camellia bushes in so many yards. Likewise, other ladies had prepared all of the delicious tidbits in their own kitchens. The organization had not spent a dime of its funds designated for missions on the reception.
For me, this event was a vivd lesson about not making assumptions which usually prove to be wrong. Thankfully, I learned this important lesson at a young age. Not many years after that party, Bob, for Valentine’s Day, planted our first camellia bush in Jesup. And perhaps these two incidents explain why I, who never work in the yard, appreciate camellias so much.
According to Steve Bender, the Grumpy Gardner for Southern Living Magazine, we can thank a Frenchman, Andre Michaux, for the abundance of camellias in the South. Plant botanist to King Louis XVI, Michaux established, in 1786, the South’s first botanical garden just north of Charleston, S.C. He also presented some of the plants that he brought from Asia to his friend Henry Middleton. also of Charleston. Begun in 1741, the plantings at the Middleton Place claim the title of “America’s oldest landscaped gardens.” Although the evergreen camellia shrub originates in Asia, its western name comes from the Moravian Jesuit botanist Georg Joseph Kamel, who first described the flora of Luzon, an island in the Philippines.
Bender adds that over 3,000 named kinds of camellias exist; we have four kinds and I don’t know the name of any of them. Despite my ignorance, I still appreciate this plant which seems to thrive throughout the South during its coldest weather.
When I returned to the classroom, I encountered the camellia in a whole new way. In one of our classic reads, To Kill a Mockingbird, Jem reacts to verbal abuse from their 80-year-old, “crotchety” neighbor Mrs. Dubose, by mutilating all of her camellia bushes in a fit of anger. As punishment, he’s required to spend two hours every afternoon after school and on Saturdays reading aloud to her. At the end of Chapter 11, Mrs. Dubose dies and Atticus comes home with a box from her for Jem. Scout describes it. ”Jem opened the box. Inside , surrounded by wads of damp cotton was a white, waxy, perfect camellia. It was a Snow-on-the Mountain.” Atticus says, “I think that was her way of telling you - everything’s all right.” Atticus goes on to explain that Mrs. Dubose has been trying to rid herself of a morphine addiction, brought on by her medications, before her death. Jem’s reading to her helped her cope with her self appointed task. Atticus says, “...real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won...she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I knew.”
Time and again, flowers, without uttering word, speak to us. Most often the stories we hear murmuring from the petals are the sweetest ones we recall from our own experiences.
2015
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