Making Way for Bigger and Better, Hopefully

Clearing the underbrush to make room for more vigorous growth.

Former home of two hibiscuses protected by a kind stranger, then rescued and brought home for the Winter.  Future home of a true tree, off to the left, its burlap-wrapped rootball taller than the two sapling hibiscuses. 

Backdrop: On the way home from an appointment this morning for a medical test, I stopped in to my local post office seeking prepaid postcards for the get out the vote campaign for the Georgia runoff elections for the U.S. Senate - none.  Detoured to the next closest post office - also none.  Apparently my neighborhood has many activists who feel passionately enough about the direction they'd like this country to take that they are exhausting the local supply of cheap postcards.  (Backup plan was to print my own; Sissy offered up unused excess cardstock, and I put my printer to use, and found a U.S. embassy-utilized get out the vote graphic (so, as a taxpayer, I figure I paid for that in part), and it all worked out in time for me to join the evening Zoom postcard party.)

En route home from the second post office, I decided to check in on one of "my" tree pits.  And happened along just as a truck with workers and mature young trees were being unloaded on the block.

They were digging up the tree pit I had planted back in the Spring with the weakest of the maples, one that did not make it.  But someone else adopted the tree pit and planted flowers, protecting the little garden with a brick border.  The workers were digging up that work to put in the new tree.

Farther down was "my" pit - that had received the second smallest of the seedlings in Spring; it, too, had died.  And then I had come back earlier in the Fall to plant two hibiscuses.  It was the day I had the nasty encounter with the tree hater.  But then I came back the following day to find my hibiscuses ringed by protective brick fragments - no doubt the work of the guerrilla gardener down the block, and my faith in community greening was restored.  Next to my pit was a tree, positioned for planting.  Mixed emotions - on the one hand, my poor hibiscuses; on the other, of course I wanted the block to have a REAL tree.  So I documented them, wondering ... should I attempt to rescue the hibiscuses?  I had no tools to dig.  Could I go home and come back in time?

I decided to cross the street to check on the maple trio.  They seemed fine, undisturbed, amid their cheerful overgrown begonia tree pitmates.  Around the corner from them, though, more mature young trees with their burlapped rootballs, positioned for planting. 

I crossed York Avenue again, thinking about my hibiscuses.  It was then that I took the above photo - just as the workers were beginning to dig up the brick rings and their supervisor was walking toward the pit.  And I decided to just ask, "If you're digging those out, could I have them back?  Of course I want a real tree to be there, but I planted those when there was nothing."  With their proper equipment, the saplings came out lickety split.  I had nothing in which to carry the bare root hibiscuses, but I rescued them back, and brought them home, and put them into a planter with the catmint - to keep them, hopefully, through the Winter.  In the Spring, if they survive, I can decide what then for them.

They were just underbrush to the City, that suddenly awoke to tend its tree pits.  But they were my little darlings, tied to Mama Hen's garden or grown from seeds I gathered, nourished, cared for, transplanted - in hopes they might thrive and grow and blossom and make my neighborhood better.

So, then ...

... Sometimes we pour all of our efforts in pursuit of a cherished hope.  We put all of our eggs into one basket, figuratively and literally.   And it doesn't work out as we'd hoped or planned.  And then, we can only hope that bigger things are in store, beyond our puny dreams.

Beyond my little hibiscuses, I had dreams of nurturing different life, bigger life.  Had... and then after bringing home the rescued hibiscus darlings, got the test results, and had to start to learn to let go of those dreams.  Processing it all still...  

...I came back to this, to provide the backdrop narrative, now with a bit more distance and perspective.  It is all still a devastating blow.  But I know I will be ok.  The rescued hibiscuses have lost their leaves as our temperatures have dropped.  But their roots should be safe under all the catmint...

I can only hope that there is more in store for me - something bigger, better than my puny little dreams.