EMWTTSFM - The Siren Call of Flowers
I grew up in a rough neighborhood. The two families across the street were tough old cooters. Neither had children. They spent their spare time building semi-tropical gardens in their backyards, which sloped toward Hogtown Creek.
I played in the creek as often as I could, digging through its banks for fossils left by ancient seas that once covered the land beneath my neighborhood. Erosion exposed limestone and prehistoric remains along the creek, a place that called like an Odyssean siren to a young boy who had been told to leave his muddy, creek-soaked clothes on the back porch beforecomong inside after another excursion for shark teeth.
My route to those tannin-stained waters took me beside the neighbors’ lush gardens, especially the closest house, where the owners had built an earthen above-ground pond stocked with koi long before the fish became popular pets. An arched Japanese-style bridge spanned the pond, beginning near the edge of the empty, heavily wooded lot that was my usual path to the creek.
I had beaten a trail through the empty lot’s wild bamboo and elderberry to a sharp bend in the creek, where heavy rains sometimes exposed a fresh layer of limestone. At one point along that trail, a break in the neighbor’s low hedge marked the property line. To my left, the rough path continued directly toward the creek. To my right was the more tempting route: through the neighbor’s yard, across the bridge over the koi pond, then down a small incline past a fern garden growing among rocks that must have been carried there from some distance. None matched the rocks I knew from my travels along the creek and through the swamps.
I could usually get across the bridge, past the pond, and make my way to the creek without being observed. Usually.
Except when the hibiscus were in bloom.
The first siren call was minor. It was the one that turned my head toward the bridge, where I would scan the yard and windows to see if anyone was watching. Then I would see the deep red hibiscus blooms on the two shrubs that flanked the bridge exit.
The real siren call.
I don’t remember the first time I sucked the nectar from a hibiscus blossom. But I’ll never forget the depth of its sweet flavor. The experience made it impossible for me to pass a flowering hibiscus without grabbing the soft petals, compressing them around the stiff central pistil. A firm jerk pulled the flower from its receptacle. A quick suck brought the nectar intended for bees, some of it destined for the hive and eventually for honey, onto my tongue.
Later in life, I kept several beehives on an east-facing Georgia hill overlooking a small cornfield surrounded by thick woods. When I tended the bees, I thought of my youth, when I would grab a hibiscus flower and suck the sweet, thick, perfect nectar into my mouth while looking over my shoulder. Then I would grab another and another and another, littering the ground with crushed petals as tell-tale evidence of my incursion before running away over the rocks, crushing ferns to get to the creek.
Now I get my flower satisfaction from the calendula I buy at the Saturday Farmers’ Market from White Walnut Flower Farm. They aren’t as sweet as hibiscus, but the golden petals scattered across my Sunday salad remind me of the days when I sucked sweetness from a flower pulled directly from the plant — and when I tested my mettle by cutting through the neighbor’s forbidden yard for the pleasure.
It brings me great joy.
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