the parable of the hibiscus

four years ago, i rescued a sad little hibiscus from a K-Mart garden center where it was being tragically overwatered and looked very lonely. i brought it home and put it on my sunny balcony and fed it Miracle-Gro and hope. but its glorious orange blooms dropped off, as such things always do, and it lost leaves and didn't grow more. still i cared for it all through the winter, but when spring rolled around, i expected nothing much from such a stunted, scruffy looking plant.

but lo! one perfect, flaming blossom. it made me smile. i redoubled my efforts with the Miracle-Gro, but to no avail; it remained as it had been, homely and misshapen in its struggle to survive, but still hanging in there. and again the next spring, it bore a single flower.

somewhere in there my depression started to worsen, and i quit paying attention to the hibiscus. i'd given up on it. it would never flourish. i tucked it away in a corner of the balcony and forgot about it. and last spring it bloomed again, to my utter astonishment. still, it seemed pointless to expend effort on a plant that would obviously never thrive. so i left it to languish for another year.

this morning when i looked outside, there it was, that single flamboyantly orange bloom, with its face turned hopefully to the sky.

apparently the moral of this story is that even if you shove something in a corner and forget about it, it will occasionally surprise you with something beautiful... but the rest of the time, it'll still be stunted, ugly, and disappointing.

somehow that doesn't really lift my spirits much.

still, i love that goddamn plant.