The other night, still unused to darkness descending before 5 p.m., I strolled out into the garden to see what was still in bloom. Actually, there was quite a lot of color out there ... several Swiss chards, lots of Wave petunias, some bright red and pink verbena, a few stray zinnias, some of that neon red pineapple sage I mentioned recently and a half dozen anemic stalks of monkshood.
I picked a few dried hydrangea heads, ones that were carmine, purple and green all at once, then turned to head back when I saw two camellia bushes nestled against the wall. Barely discernable in the deepening darkness, they brought such instant pleasure, I smiled.
Like many things in my garden, I'm not sure what kind this camellia is. I suspect some variation of Camellia japonica, because that's what most of the camellias we buy are. It's a single blossom, though camellias come in semi-double, anemone, peony and formal double varieties, too. I prefer the single. No flash. Utter simplicity, the lines so classic against the thick, dark, glossy foliage.
Camellias came to us - actually, our Southern brethren - in the late 18th century from China and were named for Georg Josef Kamel, a Moravian Jesuit missionary who studied plants and animals in the Philippines. It's thought he probably never set eyes on the flower Linnaeus later named for him. (These stories sure are strange, aren't they?)
But camellias have long been popular in Asia. I read that they've been displayed at Korean weddings as far back as 1200 B.C. That's old.
In this country, their popularity surged in the 1950s. Was that because the Queen Mum loved them (more than mums - ha ha)? Who knows. But I might have dated their "discovery" to that era. My mother carried camellias at her wedding in 1947, and I remember when she told me that many years ago, I didn't even know what a camellia was.
I took special pleasure in that little bit of family history when I picked a few camellias last week and gave them to her. They are so pretty - small, round, sweetly pink with yellow centers. I hope they brought her pleasure, too.
You can't really appreciate their delicate beauty or soft aspect in this photo, which looks as if I took it in a cave. Might as well have been. By the time I made it back to the house, the night shade was more like midnight.
I envy our fellow gardeners in the South and other parts of the world who can grow these lovely things year-round or most of the year. But there's something special, too, about their sudden appearance when the night grows long - and their resiliance to the cold and wind that mid-November brings.
Tonight, in the dark, with winter coat and gloves, I'll check on them again. Knowing them, they'll be there.
