No, the rats aren’t back.
For more than a decade, a battle has raged at The Compound. Our friend James began the slaughter on The Compound grounds, a campaign of destruction much like Sherman’s march through Georgia. And like Scarlett at Tara, I had my limits, placing my body between James and this.
This is an oleander. An oleander is supposed to be a bush. We turned ours into a tree, its foliage and flowers like a belle’s hooped skirt flowing over strong limbs. Every summer I saw the return of its flowers from my old office window and was grateful for its shade in my back yard.
James (a Yankee, by the way, even if he does have relatives in Alabama), had no patience with my romantic notions of hooped skirts and flowers. He said an oleander is a roadside shrub, not a tree. He said as long as it was allowed to hold court over my backyard, it menaced any hope of a carpet of grass or a bed of flowers. But it didn’t matter what James said, because I vowed to protect Tara the oleander with my last breath. When James retreated to Maine, I considered that I had won the war.
Also, for a long time, the oleander and I had allies from among James’s own people. Tom (Minnesota, technically not a Yankee, and yet just the way he says “milk” makes him one) was the oleander’s staunchest defender. Timmy (Pennsylvania Yankee) said no weapon would ever be allowed to fell it or he’d avenge its death. Tim (hello, Maine, TOTAL Yankee) even came down one spring and installed brick pathways to the oleander and bricked in an area for the bench beneath it. He planted grass and the grass grew. Ha!
Then the unthinkable happened. When Tim moved down here, he deserted! Not just deserted, but he allied himself with James! He, too, said I could never grow flowers and the grass would always die as long as the oleander was allowed to dominate the area. To prove his point, he chose the most sinister weapon possible. HE DID NOTHING. He stopped battling the oleander to nurture the grass. He stopped fighting to keep flowers in the beds. He let the oleander have its way, and I had to witness the slow and progressive carnage to everything that couldn’t live in its shadow.
I was finally willing to surrender like Lee at Appomattox, hoping to keep some dignity, but Tom still held out. And then…
Tom went out of town, leaving the oleander and me at the mercy of the aggressor. I see no reason why he should be spared the hideous scenes of battle that I’ve had to endure.
Such as the hacked up body of the oleander.
Or a pile of decaying oleander leaves.
The damnYankee caught in the act.
When he’s finished, there’ll be no oleander. I think it should be noted that the oleander is not going without a fight. Tim has multiple wounds.
Fortunately, my current office doesn’t look directly out at the battlefield. Instead, I get to see something like this.
Which allows me to pretend it’s not happening. Because like any Good Southern Girl, I know that if I act like it doesn’t exist, then it doesn’t.
But I also know there had damn well better be grass and flowers on the battlefield after this destruction, or as God is my witness, the oleander will rise again.
