Azaleas
"Dig 'em up and plant something tropical," I told my wife when we moved into the house of doom in 1999. I had no idea what azaleas were, and during the Fall, the old scraggly bushes were an eyesore to me. Hideous and frumpy. I could not understand why everyone in the entire neighborhood had the withering shrubs surrounding their homes underneath the live oak trees. 
"Just wait," my better half said. She was right. Each spring, for a couple of weeks, we are surrounded by huge kaladioscopic mnounds of the most intense hues imaginable, from fuschia to crimson, to violet, as the azaleas burst into bloom. Ah.....The glory of living in the South, in the Spring.She wanted me to take some photos of them this year. Here they are. Thank you, Sweetheart,for saving me from myself......Again.
Labels: Gardening, This Damned House
posted by Xavier at 5:00 AM
4 Comments:
We have some lovely whites blooming in our yard right now, and I've seen azaleas in bi-color, too. The ones here in NC are smaller than the ones I grew up with in Florida.
They grow pretty well up north too. At our old house in Cleveland we had azaleas in the front--I liked them a lot.
When we moved to Fairview Park, just to the west, we pulled out the box hedges and planted spirea and something else. Would have liked azaleas.
Lovely Azaleas!
Funny story - when I was 7 or 8 and complained incessantly that my mother had named me "Rita," she shut me up forever by informing me that she had nearly named me "Azalea." Rita's not so bad, after all, it turns out. When I was an adult, she finally admitted the Azalea thing was just a ruse to get me to quit complaining about the perfectly lovely name I'd been given.
Good on your wife for having the vision to keep those eye-popping bloomers around the house!
Pretty flowers. Are you going to shoot them and eat them?
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