It is finally happening. The hint of fall is in the air that signals the end of the humidity season. Another signal is the Confederate Rose that is blooming in my front yard. It is some relative of the native hibiscus. It has heart shaped leaves with points that make the leaves look like bats flying away. How’s that for a scientific analysis? The stalks grow 20 feet tall. It froze to the ground last winter, but is standing as tall as ever. It is one of my favorite plants. It looks like the flowers we used to make out of Kleenex and bobby pins. Some of my neighbors have the same plant with flowers that start out white in the morning and turn hot pink by late afternoon. Mine is medium pink and darkens slightly as the day goes on.
I am more of a gardener by default than design, but I accidentally picked the perfect location for it. My house sits in the corner of my lot, right next to the street. My front porch is right there. If I read on the porch at night, I look like that picture by Edward Hopper where the woman in the office is sitting in the picture window on display. I put this plant right in front of the corner where it screens the porch just a bit. It gives the semblance of privacy, if not the real thing.
Speaking of my porch, it is a place well known for its entertainment value. It has become a gathering place for new friends and old. If I am on the porch, it’s just like it used to be when everybody had a front porch, it is a signal to visitors that they are welcome to join me. Weather permitting; it is where I live when I am at home and feeling the least bit sociable. It is where most of my meals are served to guests. Breakfast is always served on the porch unless it’s so cold that my guest’s teeth rattle. All my breakfasts are portable and easy to eat. They’re like hors d’oeuvres for the morning. I have never been a grits and eggs gal. I prefer the three Sees for my breakfast food group: sandwiches, snacks and sweets. Anyway everything tastes better when looking at the flowers that surround us. All summer long there are the old fashioned altheas or Rose of Sharon as they are sometimes called. My favorites are the purple ones right by the front steps. There are also white with maroon throats and then the pure white one, which I am told is unusual. They used to grow everywhere. Now the altheas are pass-along plants. They will grow anywhere, so people quit growing them. Anything that grows too good, we consider invasive and try to kill it off. There are now double hybrid altheas that don’t reproduce so readily, so we treasure them. The same is true of roses, we poison the old varieties that spring up too readily along roadsides and pet the temperamental ones that have to be sprayed and pruned. I hear that is true all over and not just in rural Southwest Alabama where I live. If it’s a native plant, we ignore it or fight it. If it’s exotic and temperamental, we pet it. WE pull goldenrod out of our gardens and the English pet them because they don’t grow wild there.
The Confederate rose is not a native plant in its fanciful doubled variety, but it is easy to grow. It will root easily from a cutting stuck in the ground. My sister in law has three big clumps she started that way. I bought mine from a local five and ten cent store. Maybe the reason it is found mostly at older houses is because the clumps get so big. It is a prima donna in that it requires a big space for the clump to spread and flow. I just have one because it does take up so much space, but that one is making my mornings on the porch glorious.
I am more of a gardener by default than design, but I accidentally picked the perfect location for it. My house sits in the corner of my lot, right next to the street. My front porch is right there. If I read on the porch at night, I look like that picture by Edward Hopper where the woman in the office is sitting in the picture window on display. I put this plant right in front of the corner where it screens the porch just a bit. It gives the semblance of privacy, if not the real thing.
Speaking of my porch, it is a place well known for its entertainment value. It has become a gathering place for new friends and old. If I am on the porch, it’s just like it used to be when everybody had a front porch, it is a signal to visitors that they are welcome to join me. Weather permitting; it is where I live when I am at home and feeling the least bit sociable. It is where most of my meals are served to guests. Breakfast is always served on the porch unless it’s so cold that my guest’s teeth rattle. All my breakfasts are portable and easy to eat. They’re like hors d’oeuvres for the morning. I have never been a grits and eggs gal. I prefer the three Sees for my breakfast food group: sandwiches, snacks and sweets. Anyway everything tastes better when looking at the flowers that surround us. All summer long there are the old fashioned altheas or Rose of Sharon as they are sometimes called. My favorites are the purple ones right by the front steps. There are also white with maroon throats and then the pure white one, which I am told is unusual. They used to grow everywhere. Now the altheas are pass-along plants. They will grow anywhere, so people quit growing them. Anything that grows too good, we consider invasive and try to kill it off. There are now double hybrid altheas that don’t reproduce so readily, so we treasure them. The same is true of roses, we poison the old varieties that spring up too readily along roadsides and pet the temperamental ones that have to be sprayed and pruned. I hear that is true all over and not just in rural Southwest Alabama where I live. If it’s a native plant, we ignore it or fight it. If it’s exotic and temperamental, we pet it. WE pull goldenrod out of our gardens and the English pet them because they don’t grow wild there.
The Confederate rose is not a native plant in its fanciful doubled variety, but it is easy to grow. It will root easily from a cutting stuck in the ground. My sister in law has three big clumps she started that way. I bought mine from a local five and ten cent store. Maybe the reason it is found mostly at older houses is because the clumps get so big. It is a prima donna in that it requires a big space for the clump to spread and flow. I just have one because it does take up so much space, but that one is making my mornings on the porch glorious.
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