Mist Flowers
This past spring, I added a Gregg’s Mist flower to my plant collection. It’s done well. Placed between two Turks caps in a flower bed just off the end of the southern porch, the plant has thrived. It’s actually quite a scene. The Turks caps at either end of the bed are tall and bountiful covered in scarlet blooms, while the mist flower sits in a valley between the two. Purple flowers on tall stalks abound, waving gently in the breezes.
Hummingbirds sit in the hackberries just across the nearby fence and swarm the Turks caps. All manner of butterflies do as well, but they love the mist flower and there is a constant stream of visitors. Unfortunately, a black and yellow garden spider has set up shop. Its web drops down from the taller turks caps to anchor on the mist flower, and it’s had a good summer. Primarily, it likes the grasshoppers who eat the turks cap leaves, but it’s an equal opportunity predator. Butterflies are welcome as well.
It reminds me of an old saying that no good deed goes unpunished. I have fed the butterflies, but I’ve fed the spider too, which was hardly my intention. It feels like a life lesson. I’m pretty sure we’ve all done what we thought was a good thing only to have it blow up. Given change to a beggar who chastises for its inadequacy. Offered to help someone who resents the intrusion, that sort of thing. Acts of kindness that backfired or were ill received, because the garden spider had to eat, too. But it shouldn’t stop us. Because all you can really control is you and how many mist flowers you plant; the rest is up to the butterflies and nature, and the latter will take its course, and it’s none of your doing.
John W. Wilson is the author of The Long Goodbye: A Caregiver’s Tale