Wisteria Lame

Early black and white photographs of my childhood home capture the wisteria that grew on a trellis by the arch-topped living room door.

Through years of renovations, the bush bloomed with ferocity every spring – its lavender petals hanging like Japanese lanterns, followed shortly by the fuzz-covered teardrop pods.

Melissa’s childhood home had a wisteria of its own, and as we relocated ourselves to Rust Hinge Road, she grabbed one of its progeny and immediately planted the sapling next to the gate. It took root with ease. By the next year, it had woven itself into the chain link fence.

The wisteria required constant pruning lest it take over our lives. Mornings we would find it reaching toward our cars or eyeing the house walls hungrily. It grew fast. On a warm summer night you could almost hear it growing.

But spring would come and go and it just wouldn't bloom. We googled it and asked professionals and nobody had a definitive answer. "Give it fertilizer." "Starve it." "Drive a nail into its trunk." "It's probably a male so it will never bloom."

Why did the neighbors have such success with their wisterias and we got nothing but harassment from ours?

This question went through are heads along with the endless “clip, clip, clip,” of Melissa’s pruning shears.

So, we have thought long and hard about the wisteria by the gate. We considered digging the plant out and hauling it away, but its network of tendrils, just below the surface, most likely will further propagate successive generations of non-flowering variety. Meanwhile our wisteria lay fallow, quiet and conspiratorial – as if it was up to something.

We once heard that it takes seven years for a wisteria to bloom, which filled us with hope when it had been by the gate for six years. Now at eleven years, something is up.

This morning, as I walked by the gate I noticed something peculiar: the wisteria, covered with flower buds was about to pop. In a day or two we will have something to celebrate. What did we do differently? Was it the mild winter? The other bushes we yanked out? Who knows?

Maybe it can read our minds.

OK, what am I thinking now? ben.guerrero@sbcglobal.net