Another expressive painting measuring twenty inches across and sixteen inches high on stretched canvas.
The title is magnolias.
Prints of this art may be found here on Society 6 and also
here via Pixels / Fine Art America.
When I was in my early twenties I bought a house. Actually I guess I should say I had a house built for me.
Anyways, it came with no yard and I didn’t have landscapers come in and do it. I wanted to play gardener myself.
Among the various things I did to my yard to transform it from raw brown dirt was plant a few trees and shrubs.
In the very front of my yard I planted a magnolia tree. It is actually considered shrub because it doesn’t grow over twenty feet and has that weird craggy bark, but I think of them as trees so that is what I’m calling it. I’ll refrain from telling about which sort of magnolia tree it was specifically because it is irrelevant to the art. It wasn’t irrelevant to me however as it was my favorite type magnolia tree.
Magnolias are hardy. Most anyways. This one was perfect for my yard. Where I planet it was perfect for the magnolia. Partial sun, good shade with three to five hours of direct sun daily depending on the time of year… I planted it right where all could see it and I watched it carefully.
It did not grow as it should. It grew at maybe a quarter of it’s expected speed.
Two years in it ceased growing almost completely. It then got a type of lichen growing on it. I had an arborist come look because I wasn’t sure what it was. I knew nothing about that sort of thing and thought it was killing my magnolia.
The arborist said it was fine and normal. It didn’t hurt a thing. He did say the tree was not particularly healthy though. He couldn’t tell me why however so I sought a second opinion. The other arborist also knew jack shit about why my magnolia wasn’t thriving. Bugging my landscaping clients turned out to be a waste of time. I learned that most landscapers don’t know jack shit about anything with plants besides how to plant them and tear them out.
Over the next few months I secretly became an expert on all things magnolia. They are pretty cool. They have been around since the frigg’n time of the dinosaurs. A hundred million years easily, and maybe longer, but mine wasn’t doing well.
Anyways… I did everything I could to pamper the stupid tree. I even bought another (which did just fine) to be it’s friend. Since it didn’t perk up I eventually dug up it’s friend and moved it to another place where it again did just fine.
My stubbornness didn’t end though. This was MY magnolia in the front of MY yard.
Years went by with me fiddling with the tree. It always bloomed for me, but never grew.
Eventually I sold my house. It was the house I’d gotten with my first wife. She had become my ex-wife and I didn’t wish to live in what once was a house we’d had together even though it was solely mine.
In selling my house I lost my magnolia tree and a few other things which were of importance to me for various foolish reasons.
I drove by my old house a year later and saw my magnolia wasn’t doing well. I drove by a few times the year after. On the third year when I drove by I found that the new owners of the house had had all the trees removed. My magnolia was gone.
I’ve not been by that house now in many years. There is no reason.
So many hours of reading, learning, care giving, and in general trying ended up being for nothing. I learned it really doesn’t matter how much work we put into things sometimes. The tree will grow or not all on it’s own no matter what we do.
We can appreciate the blossoms while they are there. That is about it.
Again – prints of this art may be found here on Society 6 and also
here via Pixels / Fine Art America.
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