It was two springs ago that I brought home a gardenia tree aglow with bright, white, fragrant buds. It was gorgeous. The occasion was to celebrate the end of a long season, punctuated by breakthroughs and new beginnings. My intent was to look at it every spring when it bloomed as a reminder of God’s faithfulness and goodness.
In a matter of days, it shriveled up completely. Every flower, and eventually every leaf, died. I called the nursery to ask what happened and they told me, “It’s either dead or it’s in transplant shock. You won’t know which one until next year, but just keep treating it like it’s alive and you’ll see.”
It was at that moment that transplant shock became my go-to metaphor for everyone and everything in the post-pandemic world, including myself.
This gardenia has a prime spot on our patio in a large decorative pot. Though I was committed to seeing out its destiny, when it became too ugly to justify its occupancy, I pruned every last wilted leaf and brown flower from the tree in an attempt to eliminate the worst blight. The next month, while preparing the patio for a party, my husband suggested we might want to toss the tree. I told him it might not be dead. He looked incredulous. I understood his skepticism. There was nothing about it that connoted a potential for a comeback.
The next week it developed one small green shoot coming out of an otherwise dry branch.
As the months passed, I impatiently and intently studied every green shoot that arrived on my prophetic little transplant-shocked tree and treated them like an answered prayer. It was a visible example of slow growth and the faith to believe something was happening in the soil and roots.
One day, I realized the best, new growth was coming from the neck of the tree and that it was time to prune all the old branches back to the trunk. This was hard. It was not pretty as it was, but at least it was in a shape reminiscent of its initial beauty. Unready to commit to such a drastic action, I pruned everything except for one branch which contained the last remaining evidence of the tree’s original vitality. I was foolishly romanticizing that the new growth and the old branch could somehow meet up and create a pleasant shape.
Months later, I looked at the tree. It had a healthy amount of new foliage at the neck and that stupid-looking singular branch jutting out from its side. I needed to prune the whole branch if I wanted to support the new growth. With equal part reluctance and faith, I took a gardening sheer to it and let it go. There stood an unimpressive and awkward, albeit healthy, tree. It resembled a drawing a first grader might create of a stickman with hair coming straight out of the stick body. No head. No arms. It was nothing like the beautiful, fragrant full-sized topiary I had brought home from the nursery more than a year before.
Stickman lingered and activated my impatience, causing me to study the tree less frequently until, eventually, spring returned. One year after I brought it home, thankfully, it was no longer just a body and a neck; the branches had regrown. Upon the branches, new green leaves made an appearance with renewed vitality. I was content to know we were moving in a positive trajectory. However, I was disappointed that no single bud of flower appeared.
It would be a flowerless spring. Branches and leaves would have to suffice.
I held my breath as winter turned to spring, knowing another year had passed. This month, I look out the doorway and, at first glance, the tree looks about the same as a year ago. Not bad, but will there ever be flowers again?
One sunny day, in between gloomy days, I half-heartedly fertilized it. There was no need to water it as strange, wet weather patterns continue to unfold in Southern California–atmospheric rivers, flash floods, and snow-topped mountains reappearing on Easter. If the sun wishes to come out long enough to warm the tree before the heat of summer, it has the potential to be beautiful and fragrant again. It could thrive.
The other day, from my dining chair, I noticed new, light-green sprouts emerging from darker green leaves. Fertilizer, water, and heat are working and invite me to hope and watch with regularity. Now a part of my morning ritual, just as sure as my cup of coffee, I step outside onto the cold, wet patio to look. Just shy of two years since the transplant shock that resulted in apparent death and definite dormancy, I am fully engaged with renewed hope in the plight of my little tree.
This year, tucked within the light-green growth, 16 blooms are waiting to open.
Waiting, waiting, every day.
And one day, when I step downstairs to brew a cup of coffee, at least one fragrant, white bud will be waiting for me.