Rose of Sharon Bush and a Friendship

Spring has sprung. The grass has become a luscious green, and weeds & perennial plants are starting to grow. Of course the weeds always do quite well, out growing everything else. Trees and bushes are beginning to leaf out, with the canopy in wooded areas closing in.

Yard work begins with picking up hundreds of sticks and moving them to big piles we've made over the years. These stick piles provide shelter and protection for little animals and birds.

The dead remains of the
Rose of Sharon Bush.

 A disappointment for me, was finding that my Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus Syriacus) had died. I was given a start by my friend - Bob. We had worked together. He was the oldest guy in the department - all jobs were male dominant trade careers, and he was the one most open to having female co-workers.

Bob was a plasterer, a master of his trade. Plastering is not drywall work. It is better than drywall and fireproof. Plastering is the old-fashion way of building walls, using lath and plaster, and it is an art which is being lost.

Bob was open to working with me and even teaching his trade. He taught me how to repair plaster walls. I never had an opportunity to build a whole wall on my own, but helped him with putting up the lath and mixing the plaster.

It was on many jobs that I watched Bob holding a hawk full of plaster and taking the edge of the trowel into the plaster, moving it out and away, while tipping the hawk towards his body. The first time he had me try this, I dumped the hawk full of plaster down the front of my dark green uniform. He chuckled, his big belly jiggling up and down, and told me, "Don't touch it. You'll make a bigger mess if you try to clean it off, because it will smear. Let it dry, and then it will come off in chucks."

Even after it dried and the chucks came off, I was still left with a filty uniform that I had to walk around in.

Bob and I would team up to do other kinds jobs as well. Once we went to check on a job - what needed to be done, what supplies we needed, etc. Bob was up on the ladder checking around a light fixture, when he suddenly let out a yip, jumping around on the ladder.

Startling me, I jumped back and away, thinking he was being shocked by electricity somehow. Then, with his hands over his head, Bob threw his hip towards me and shouted, "Get it, get it, get it!"

This only caused me to jump further back, but I said, "Get what?"

"Get my pager!"

I reached up and pulled his pager off his belt - it was vibrating. Bob always set his pager so he could hear it, but somehow it had been switched to vibrate. When it went off, it startled him...

I was so relieved that he wasn't being electrocuted, but I got so tickled at what happened, I started laughing until I had tears in my eyes....

Bob, his wife, and I became friends, even after he retired. When I finally became a homeowner, Bob gave me a start from his huge Rose of Sharon. That start just didn't want to grow, despite it being a plant that is suppose to grow well.

Two new shoots from the
Rose of Sharon Bush.
Photo by Tracey R. Simmons 2016

The interesting thing is that Rose of Sharon started to grow after Bob passed away suddenly. It even had two different colors of blooms, something Bob's didn't have. It grew to be over six feet tall, but then suddenly died for no apparent reason. This was upsetting, because it had become a way for me to remember Bob and the good times we had shared as friends and co-workers.

Last weekend, I trimmed off the dead branches. In the process, I found not one, but two new shoots from that Rose of Sharon bush. I feel like the Heavens above smiled down on me, causing that growth. And in return, I smiled back, was thankful, and remembered Bob.