Gardenia

The gardenia plant by the front door was buried under a huge geranium plant and didn't reveal itself until I took out the geranium to give the birds of paradise some room to preen their "feathers". What was revealed didn't look so good, but we had more pressing things to do in the garden, so we left it there. Six months later, it is thriving. It has tripled in size, developed glossy dark green leaves, creamy white blossoms, delicate green edged buds and a characteristic scent to greet arriving guests.

And therein lies the problem. I find that people either love gardenias or they hate them. I have always put myself in the latter category due to associations with wrist corsages presented by feckless young men for junior high school proms and corsages pinned with giant lethal looking hat pins to the ample of bosoms of maiden aunts at weddings. The scent, pleasant outside, becomes cloying when  one's face is being pressed into said ample bosom, dangerously close to the lethal hatpin!

However the plant by our front door deserves a stay of execution for soldiering on in the hottest part of the garden, smothered under a giant geranium. It was looking particularly pretty today covered in raindrops, yes raindrops, here in drought stricken California. The weatherman would call it a "trace" of rain and insist that it did nothing to ease the drought and mustn't dissuade us from bathing in a teacup and lugging buckets of "greywater" from the shower to the garden, but it has done a lot to dust off the garden and raise our flagging morale.