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
