Behold the Hibiscus!

This little sucker is about three years old, a standard bought at Home Depot for like, nothing, that bloomed its head off the first year and then...stopped. I've watered it, fed it, sunned it, shaded it, nursed it. And finally! The reward. One stinkin' bloom, which will shrivel by tonight and be gone. Pretty, isn't it?

It is August 4 and there is not a hint of another budling on the bush. Make hay while the sun shines. Sigh.

More...

Frank has it right, I think. Each year he buys his parents an hibiscus for their anniversary in June, and it blooms in their New Jersey garden until it collapses in the first fall frost. And they throw it out and get another in spring.

Stupidly, I keep them. There's another, a double pink standard, at least I think it's a double pink...the plant hasn't flowered in ten years. It stands six feet tall in its pot and I didn't bother putting it out in the garden this spring, a waste of space. Instead, it sits outside my second floor office in my tiny solarium, looking green and leafy. (Truthfully, at the moment it's green and pathetically droopy...hang in there plant, I'll hoist the watering can momentarily).

Greg moved it from the bedroom where it usually sits in the space on his side of the bed, passive aggressively reminding him that he made an immense hole in the wall whenever ago to make a closet and then immediately lost interest.

Not that he's taking the hint.