Monday, April 2, 2012

It Has Arrived

I soon will spend days longing for rain, to take the sting out of the onset of the heat. It will be 90 degrees this second day of April.  Spring,  always heralded by the blooming Ligustrum, the scent reaching into the farthest corners of my brain. Tiny white blossoms blasting their damn poison in to every pore of my body, a plant that drives me to depression.  It only took me to the age of eleven to realize it. Each year as they flanked the front porch of my childhood home and sneakily popped into bloom my head would ache. My limbs feel heavy and encumbered, my thoughts becoming fuzzy and unfocused. Then the sadness loomed, overwhelming and all encompassing.

My mother would ask, "What’s wrong?"

  "I don't feel well". “My head hurts.”  “I'm tired."

"It must be the Ligustrum", she would say.

One day as I sat on the brick steps feeling like I was drowning in the thickness of my own lethargy, the sweet smell enveloping my head, I spied my fathers hedge clippers propped against the iron railings and the solution was as clear and immediate to me as breaking the surface of black water to find pure oxygen waiting.

When she came home, my mother eyed the bruised white carcasses strewn across the walkway and asked sharply,

"What did you do?"

I braced myself. Willing to accept my sentence to uphold my principles I looked her straight in the eye.

   "I killed them."

She stared for a moment at the hacked hedge. Her mouth seemed to twitch ever so slightly and I waited.  I waited for her eyes to narrow in anger.  Waited for her to grit her teeth and begin the tirade. Waited for her voice.  Her  lash of choice.  I stood waiting and then…..

She simply looked back at me for a moment, then turned nodding her head, and without another word walked up the stairs and into the house.


He said: I bought eight of these bushes to plant out front. They get about ten feet high so they will make a great privacy hedge. They grow fast and they are supposed to get little flowers on them in the spring.
When he saw my face he said: They aren't Ligustrum. The tag says something else.

I said: They look like Ligustrum. That's just a general name. There are different varieties.

No, he said, They're not Ligustrum.



Ligustrum (Japanese Privet)

Sometimes I miss the hell out of my mother.

© 2012 All Rights Reserved by MOTPG

17 comments:

  1. I feel your pain - but for me, it's the oak pollen. Argh!

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    1. He it here too! My car could pollinate the entire city.

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  2. OH geez, they gotta go! Anything that makes you feel that bad MUST go.

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    1. I'll realize I feel creepy and then notice them. There are just SOOO MANY!

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  3. Well done. Don't your kids just continue to astound you? That reaction was just so precious.

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  4. Ack... maybe that's part of my problem! Where are the hedge clippers?

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    1. Well, they might be in the shed but at my house they are likely rusting out in the yard somewhere ; )

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  5. I laugh at some of your posts - so eloquently written.

    Mine is anything and eveything which has pollen :-) Roses are the WORST! My hubby loves that all flowers make me sneeze

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    1. My poor SeaMonkey is worse off than I am as far as sneezing and itching. The only thing that doesn't make him a miserable mess is The Ligustrum!

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  6. Is this true? Can someone feel this allergic? I'm asking because I"ve been feeling like hell all week and everything is in bloom and my head is pounding right now, I can't even bend over.

    I swear, I almost burst into tears at the memory of the Beatles breaking up.

    Really? allergies do this? I'm serious...

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    1. These flowers absolutely do this to me. I don't know if there have been studies about these types of symptoms but I am certain. I don't know how my mother put it together, unless she had something similar.

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  7. My nose itched while reading this. Itched so badly I have to stop and scratch it as I type.

    You took those plants right back, yes?

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    1. No. He bought them last year. They're 8 feet tall already! Hence, my trusty clippers : )

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