The South is Seeping in

Magnolias, camillias, hydrangeas, gardenias, and azaleas are the flowers of the South. Sure, ever good Southern garden has roses in the Summer and daffodils in the spring, a slew of other worthy flowers for each season. Growing up, we always had pictures in our Easter dresses taken by the azaleas clustered out front and when I saw them blooming a few weeks ago I warned them that Easter would be later this year and they needn't rush things too much. Because-after all- everyone knows that the Azalea trails and Easter morning pictures are what distinguish the warm Southern winters from the official Spring.

It was a blow to my Southern credentials when earlier this week I whispered to the fiancé that I thought azaleas to be gaudy. Over-grown cotton candy wads, dyed like Easter eggs and piled around one another--that's how I described them. The thing about azaleas that bothers me so much is that each flower is exquisite-- her tiny freckles and blushing pink face like an exotic beauty-- but there are so many on each bush that hardly anyone can see a flower's beauty. Instead there are elephantine bushes packed with pink blossoms dropped onto the library lawn, or lining the street so that they look more like one giant pink blob.

The newlywed grandparents called us Tuesday to pronounce the azaleas at their honeymoon location "the most beautiful azaleas ever," you can imagine that I was not much persuaded by the claim. Even so, the lure of a giant garden (and getting to meet my soon-to-be-grandmother in-law) won out.

A view from Callaway Gardens with the grandparents

Maybe it was the drive to the place or seeing the grandparents' joy or maybe it was the effects of the fairies, but when I saw the place they had been telling us about I immediately wanted to recant. With all the exotic variance I saw them instead as a fairy counsel gathered. With all the subtleties of shade, light, and color they were a dress worn by the forest floor. Wandering through the maze of shoulder high color left me dazzled, but didn't dull the beauty of each freckled blossom, the hairy moss, bumblebees, spiders, or the long shadows of the towering pines. I could have spent half the day in this tiny section petting each flower, admiring the spider's geometry-soaking up the fey of the place.


When the fiancé said we had to move on, I knew that there would be many other beautiful things to see, but I was sad indeed to leave the azaleas that taught me the beauty of their togetherness.