Sometimes we just want to be left alone

After we built our back deck, I purchased three August Beauty gardenias to plant next to it.  I imagined myself, sitting leisurely on a deck chair on late summer evenings, sipping tea and enjoying their delicate beauty and fragrance.

As I often learn, reality does not always live up to my fabulous plans.  That summer, white flies invaded my back yard,  establishing huge colonies on the undersides of the leaves of my baby gardenias.  Before long, sooty mold began growing on the honey dew extracted by the white flies, covering the foliage with a nasty black film.  No amount of washing or insecticide seemed to deter the white flies from their new home.

By the end of their first summer, one small shrub was completely dead and the others were significantly deformed from losing so many of their branches.  I dug up the two surviving shrubs;  I gave one to a good friend who was willing to try resuscitating it. 

I took the other twiggy shrub and stuck it in the ground in the back corner of my yard.  I carefully explained that "she" was now completely on her own.  If she wanted to live in my backyard she was going to have to survive on rain water and compost. 

It has been six years since I abandoned that gardenia; I can't say that the shrub has thrived but it has slowly filled in the gaps, grown new leaves and established itself in the backyard soil.  This year,  it bloomed for the first time.   There are very few flowers as elegant as a gardenia!

Just like people, plants just want to be left alone sometimes.