It is a celebration when our back porch Catalpa blooms. We have an bonus extra-giant, gently-fragranced window box and we celebrate that it lives another year. Rooted between two driveways, it’s had at least 7 lives. Between a killer vine, many seasons of aphid attacks, and then we stupidly nearly killed it in a one-two punch with a new retaining wall one year and then an updated driveway the following year. One dear neighbor wanted to chop it in half (the part that hung over her driveway) when it was hanging on for dear life looking awful but not dead. Cooler minds prevailed thank god. Yet even though it’s been strangled, eaten, suffocated, and hated-on, it still lives as of July 2023.
Help me celebrate these blooms and our second floor, city-porch view.
The last two blows have left it struggling and bearing smaller leaves, but this is the first strong year of blooming in 4 years, in spite of an early, large-scale, aphid attack this spring. The leaves weep and weep sap tears that turn sticky black all over the cars, the grill, the fence and porch railings.
I suspect that our rainy 6 weeks has given it the edge it needed for this year’s blossom victory.
Back in the day you wouldn’t be able to see our neighbor’s house. But the aphids made the sickly leaves fall off. The tree knows how to prioritize energy and can keep producing leaves, even if smaller. A cascading decline: the fewer leaves, the less it can collect food from the sun. Many blossoms become a luxury.
As you can see in the summer of 2023, we live in luxury.
The obvious sign of decline is my heartache. Though for another year, we have a tree-top refuge; still supporting squirrels using it as a swing highway to get to the mulberry tree. We spy backyard birds using the tree as a rest stop, or to nip a bug, or to get a better eyeball on those ripening mulberries.
Did I mention ripened mulberries?
Another bonus tree in view from our porch, to the left of the Catalpa. This year the the blossoms and the fruit came in at the same time.
It doesn’t take much for us to be entertained this time of year.
As of now, we start the ‘blossom shower’ season. I’ve cleaned up most of the diseased leaves that have already fallen. This is when I do a quick broom to keep ahead, but we still track brown blossoms into the house.
I don’t know how many more years our Catalpa has left. Will it be a slow demise, when the leaves, already slow to come out, just don’t; or will some sudden catastrophe strike?
Maybe I am overidentifying, as I advance into my 60’s, understanding time and bonus blessings better than ever.
I’ll get out the artillery (a long hose attached to a soap water spray) as soon as the hard rains stop for a minute –anything to slow the aphids and the weeping.
Love the lobelia in the window boxes—have some too!
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Electric blue!