May flowers brought to you by May showers

[gyzki]

This morning at paper-fetchin' time, I caught the first white rhodo in the act of opening up. And while the purple rhodos are massively out, too (some years there's as much as a colorless week between when the purples go away and the whites open up

Comments

[mindways]

Ian Malcolm was right: Life will find a way.

Particularly when that life is rhododendrons. I'm not gonna say they're outright indestructible, but...

At one place I live, the landlord decided1 to take out the 6-7 large rhodies by our front walk. He razed them to the ground, giving the front yard a somewhat desolate and alien look2, but never managed to schedule his friend with the backhoe to come dig out the roots.

As spring progressed, the rhododendrons started sending up new shoots. And every week when the gardener came by to weed-whack the lawn, he would *massacre* those shoots with the weed whacker, because weed whackers don't work well when used on things very close to stumps. They weren't whacked so much as flogged into oblivion each week, leaving tattered strands of green once-was-a-leaf dangling limply.

But they kept coming back.

Eventually, I put up little signs asking him to stop whacking the things, because they'd suffered enough already3. He did, and without their weekly beatdown the rhododendrons flourished... and

[negothick]

I seem to recall that Rhododendrons originated in the Himalayas.
Yes, thank you Internets, "grows on the stony alpine slopes and ledges at altitudes of 12,000 to 14,500 feet."
Survivors, no?

[gyzki]

I am certainly not going to be shy about pruning them under control in the future!
Nor, if they're native to high altitudes like that, shall I worry about more cold winters.