CREPE MYRTLE TIME

I have always said that if crepe myrtles didn’t bloom so long that we would appreciate them more. We have festivals and trails for short term bloomers like azaleas and dogwoods, but we ignore the equally beautiful crepe myrtles because they last so long. My fairy godmother, Kathryn Tucker Windham says they bloom 100 days once they start. I have just noticed them in the past week or so, so we have over 90 days of splendor left.

Downtown Thomasville has been revitalized with new plantings and streetscapes. An integral part of the scheme is the light lavender pink Near East crepe myrtles. They have a restrained gentility of bloom that enhances rather than shouts. I have always liked that…until this year. The crepe myrtles that catch my eye this year are the happy watermelon reds. There is one up the street at a very unremarkable house. You don’t even notice the house, though, for the sentinel tree. I’m including a picture of it to make your eyes glad.

I have done something wrong with my crepe myrtles. They are gigantic trees, but don’t seem to bloom too well. Perhaps I need to prune, them, but they’re so big, I’d have to hire a tree trimming company to do it. They aren’t that old in plant terms. I can remember distinctly when I planted them. A local girl was getting married. Because her college roommate was the Governor’s daughter, there was a tea for her at the Governor’s Mansion. I bought them that day. I thought they were all going to be one color, white, but I turned out with 5 different plants to have 5 different colors. That was in the days before I became a born again gardener, so they are lucky to have lived at all, let alone bloomed. I have pretty much ignored them low these 25 years, but yesterday I made a point to have a good look at them. They are not shouting glory to the skies like the tree up the street. In fact, they’re hardly even saying “hello”.

I am glad they put the crepe myrtles in downtown, even if I wish now they were a brighter, bawdier version of themselves. Thomasville is not a restrained, genteel Black Belt town, we are noisier than that with the town being built up around the train tracks. I live downtown. The day is punctuated by the whistle blasts of rumbling locomotives. As gas prices rise, I expect to hear more of them.

The train tracks were the interstates of their day. Before that, it was the rivers with their steamboats. Rural Southwest Alabama was in the mainstream during both of those eras. When the interstates were built, we were bypassed. It really turned out to be a good thing because, it is like our small towns remained intact, untouched by urban sprawl. We still have downtowns and trees. When the bank built a new parking lot downtown, they left a particularly nice purple crepe myrtle intact. I’m going to go in a few minutes and ride around town to count the blooming crepe myrtles. It‘s a new game for me. You are never too old to experience wonder. That is how I plan to spend today, enjoying life in rural Southwest Alabama.