A Pink Surprise

We bought our house in July of 2002. It's a decent house, nothing fancy, middle-class neighborhood. We had some shrubs out front that stayed leafy all winter, which was nice. Then, at the very beginning of March, my shrubs started showing some flowers. Lovely pinky-coral flowers. Within a couple of weeks, the shrubs were COVERED with beautiful pinky coral flowers. By the end of the month, the flowers were gone.

At the same time, I noticed flowers on shrubs like mine all over my little city. In all kinds of colors! White and pink and red and pinkish-red and purple. Everywhere! The whole town burst into color for the month of March. By the end of the month, it was all gone.

What WERE these things? I did some research, and found them on the web. Azaleas. Evergreen azaleas. A botanist friend described them as a "once-a-year glory." This year, when they are done blooming, I will trim back the evergreen stems so as to have more and more concentrated blooms next year.

We did not know that our shrubs would burst into colors for the month of March when we bought the house. It was a beautiful and delightful surprise.