Perseverance
A month ago, my son-in-law brought me some plants for our terrace, since various annoying setbacks prevented me from reveling in my usual happy spring foray at Saunderskill Farms in upstate New York, almost walking distance from our country house. He had chosen a glorious array of purple and white petunias, delicate spires of purple florets, pink fuschias that revealed silky purple interiors, and a magnificent hanging fuschia bursting with fat pink buds, that quite took my breath away. I imagined drinking my morning coffee under the swaying blooms once they had all opened.
We have a ficus tree that winters behind our white reclining couch in the living room, and then settles decoratively into a corner of our small terrace when the last frosts are over. We nursed it from a sprig, many years ago, to its present impressive height, and every year it gets a little harder to maneuver it back and forth between apartment and terrace. My husband heaved a sigh of relief when he had pushed and pulled it to its usual corner, and it was only later that we realized that one of its branches was in the way of the hanging fuschia, which immediately reacted to sharing its sparse light and sun by dropping buds and blooms all over the terrace floor. It had become a mass of swaying green leaves. I was devastated.
Meanwhile, the ficus, dancing in the light spring breezes, began to unfurl new leaves of delicate green, mixing in with its dark and dusty winter foliage. I noticed that the hanging fuschia seemed to have developed bunches of low hanging buds, and sprigs waved above the ficus with sprays of new buds reaching upward to the light. Today, they all opened, creating a gorgeous lacy filigree of pink and white between and above the leaves and branches of the ficus. They adapted to each other and created a superb counterbalance of shades of green and bursting clusters of color. Their combined beauty outshone their separate existences. A lesson to be learned?
We have a ficus tree that winters behind our white reclining couch in the living room, and then settles decoratively into a corner of our small terrace when the last frosts are over. We nursed it from a sprig, many years ago, to its present impressive height, and every year it gets a little harder to maneuver it back and forth between apartment and terrace. My husband heaved a sigh of relief when he had pushed and pulled it to its usual corner, and it was only later that we realized that one of its branches was in the way of the hanging fuschia, which immediately reacted to sharing its sparse light and sun by dropping buds and blooms all over the terrace floor. It had become a mass of swaying green leaves. I was devastated.
Meanwhile, the ficus, dancing in the light spring breezes, began to unfurl new leaves of delicate green, mixing in with its dark and dusty winter foliage. I noticed that the hanging fuschia seemed to have developed bunches of low hanging buds, and sprigs waved above the ficus with sprays of new buds reaching upward to the light. Today, they all opened, creating a gorgeous lacy filigree of pink and white between and above the leaves and branches of the ficus. They adapted to each other and created a superb counterbalance of shades of green and bursting clusters of color. Their combined beauty outshone their separate existences. A lesson to be learned?
I read somewhere "You don't get harmony when everyone sings the same note."