This is the message I gave
my son when he answered our cell phone, as he and his dad were on the way to
the home improvement store. His
response: “The pelican crows at dawn.” As you see, he thought I was joking and came
right back with nonsense. That’s our
boy. But he did pass the message on to his dad, who
was driving and his dad explained that this was not only wonderful news, it was
no joke to us.
Possum haw, for the
uninitiated, is a Texas native holly, deciduous, which produces glorious red
berries in the fall. Where the name came
from is anyone’s guess; it is as unique as the plant. If, of
course, the plant is a female, it bears berries; if it is a male holly, no
berries. We planted the shrub in the
spring of last year, and last fall it produced no berries, nor did we detect
any blooms during this last summer. So
we came to the conclusion that we had a male holly, and while it would be a
lovely shrub, it would be berry-less.
Until today, when I was raking the first crop of leaves of the season,
and a shaft of sunlight reached over our house and lit up the possum haw at the
moment I glanced up, and there those lovely berries were.
So all our fretting and sending
strong thoughts of encouragement toward the possum haw paid off, as well as the
careful watering we gave it during this interminable period of drought.
We all, gardeners or not,
have situations where there is something we hope for very much, and which we
despair of happening. And in the scheme
of the world’s problems, a tiny frustration about a small plant is
irrelevant. But in the small personal
world we each experience on our own, it is the small despairs we must deal with
every day, and it is the small joys that light up our lives like the sunlight
lit up our possum haw.
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