This Gardenia

Perfection in a Pickle Jar:
A simple, all-white bouquet of gardenia, gooseneck loosestrife, and hydrangea 'Blushing Bride'.

I visited my mom last Saturday and picked a bouquet of gardenia, loosestrife, and hydrangea from her garden. She gave me an old pickle jar to use for a vase. This gardenia is the classic old-fashioned kind with glossy green leaves and large, fragrant, pure-white flowers on a volkswagen-sized shrub. I gave her this gardenia way back in the fall of 1998; it was a small rooted cutting that came from a plant growing at 110 Lamont Drive. That was the year I first fell in love with gardenias in general, and this one in particular. My father had just died on June 2. I returned home later that day after a week of death-bed vigil to do laundry and pack a new bag for the funeral. When I pulled in the driveway, I was welcomed by this gardenia in full bloom. It had never bloomed like that before. Or maybe Daddy's death had awakened something in me that allowed me to truly see it for the first time. Whatever the case, that's the story of this gardenia and how I fell in love.