Long Lost Friend #1

It must have been five years ago that I lost my heart to Charmant. Maybe longer. There it was at Whitney's, one of the most beautiful rhodies I'd ever seen. It was dressed for the grandest of occasions in the most lustrous red and white blooms. Each truss exploded with white bells embellished with a pink edge and a red throat. But not just white. A most extraordinary pearl white that seemed to glow from some inner radiance. Hans Hachmann, one of the world's best hybridizers, considers this to be one of his very finest.

I planted my Hachmann's Charmant in my back yard. The last several years he has not shown his face. Last year I realized why. He had been almost choked out by larger, stronger rhododendrons. No light was getting in, and his branches had grown long and spindly from trying to reach the sun. I had to try to save him. I grabbed my shovel and dug him out. Even at his age his root system was manageable. I lifted him into my three-wheeled ambulance and transferred him to ICU. Then I pruned half his branches down to growth buds near the ground, fertilized, watered, and prayed.

This summer he has rewarded me with iridescent beauty even while his amputated branches struggle to push out new growth. He has promised me he is going to survive, and in time he will be a beauty again.

Yesterday I did the second surgery. It seemed he was singing - a new song, a song I recognized...

"Beautiful, that's how Mercy saw me.
For I was broken and so lost,
Mercy looked past all my faults.
The justice of God saw what I had done,
But Mercy saw me through the Son.
Not what I was, but what I could be,
That's how Mercy saw me."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQ470J316iI

Just as God wants each of us to become all that He planned, Hachmann's Charmant will live to fulfill his potential. I can't wait to see that day!