The Bequest
Thirty-five years ago, I discovered and fell in love with the Mendocino Coast. From that brief visit, my goal was to live here. It took ten years. In that time, I finished my undergraduate degree, took an early retirement from my airline job, and started graduate school. In late June, 1990, a year before I graduated, I used my last free pass to fly here from Miami to look for a house.
I’m remembering this while watering the native azalea I planted twenty years ago. There isn’t another plant in the yard that I’ve taken such great pains to keep going, or held such high hopes for. And this reminds me of house-hunting twenty-five years ago.
I created a rating guide for each place the real estate agent showed me, assigning stars based on whether the places possessed what I considered most important: trees, remoteness from neighbors, the ocean, a pond or creek, a view, and space for a garden. What the house itself looked like was way down the list. I didn’t care as much about what I lived in as what I would be surrounded by.
One of our stops on that whirlwind three-day search was a house on Pudding Creek Drive. It was a plain little place, well inside my price range. I don’t recall it having any trees, but the yard was full of large robust rhododendrons. This being late June, they were no longer in bloom.
An old man met us at the door. The interior was dimly lit, and it took a minute for my eyes to adjust. His wife lay on the couch, which was made up with a sheet, pillows and blankets, I suspect, so their small master bedroom could be shown. She was pale and clearly quite ill.
I nodded and she nodded. Her husband showed us through the house, often with his hand on a wall for balance. It was tidy and dark, filled with family pictures, dated furniture, and assorted mementos. This wasn’t going to get more than a single star: too close to its neighbors, no trees, no to-die-for view, but I muttered ‘Nice. Isn’t this lovely,’ at the doorway to each room.
After the tour, the owner led me to a stool at the kitchen counter, turned on a little lamp, and opened a photo album.
“I . . .,” he said, glanced at his wife, and corrected to “we have 26 species of rhododendrons.” The pictures were of each one in full bloom: pinks, purples, reds, and whites.
I thought my heart would break.
This old couple had reached the end of their time together in the home they’d shared for fifty years. She was going into hospice, he into a nursing facility, and the house to a stranger. He wanted me to appreciate the care and love they’d put into their rhodies, the only truly priceless things they had to pass on to the next owner. I looked at every picture, and made the appropriate noises. Back in the realtor’s car, and to her dismay, I broke down and cried.
Even if I had loved that house, if it had scored five stars, I don’t think I could have bought it. I didn’t want to be the one who made them move out, and away from their flowers. I didn’t want to be the one to put an end to their lives together.
The place that got five stars was three acres of redwoods and Doug firs, on a creek, bordered by Jughandle State Park three sides. There was a burned-down nursing home out in the middle of the yard, and a separate duplex that would eventually become my tiny house.
I remembered all this while watering that poor azalea. It’s been in the ground for about twenty years, has never bloomed, and is leggy.
In the wild they grow in riparian areas, tolerate sandy soil and periodic flooding. I planted the poor thing in my clay-based soil, where I have to supplement winter rains with the occasional good soaking.
Unlike our native rhodies and most azaleas, they are deciduous. The buds are a coral color; the blooms white with a yellow center. They smell heavenly—not that I’ve ever seen or smelled one on my plant.
When I brought the azalea home, I planted it near a red alder, another riparian species. Over the next decade the azalea languished as the alder grew, and grew. Clumps of sword fern took hold in a semi-circle around them, and eventually dwarfed the azalea.
A few years ago, I had the alder taken out, only to have wild onions invade and cover every square inch of exposed soil. I spent hours digging them up, one tiny bulb at a time. I cut back the sword ferns, mulched and fertilized the azalea, and watered it all through our dry summer. The onions return each spring with a vengeance, but the azalea has also grown. The leaves are green and supple. No flowers, but I remain hopeful.
While watering, I looked around. In the twenty-five years I’ve lived here, I’ve protected every tree, removing only four—a dead bishop pine, two Doug firs to make room for an addition, and that alder. The forest surrounding me is virtually intact.
I realize now I was wrong: that old man wanted to sell to someone who would love his rhodies the way he had. I would have been that person. He hoped for his place, as I do for mine, that whoever comes after me will love this forest, filled—at this moment with the song of a Pacific wren—and will take care of my azalea.
Epilogue: This was written 8 years ago. The azalea bloomed for the first time 4 years ago and is blooming as I write this.