The Scraggly Hibiscus

I have a hibiscus bush that has made it through several seasons of living inside and outside. I loved it for its color and was happy to make the effort to keep this plant alive.

This most recent transition from inside living to the outdoor deck seems particularly rough. It currently looks much like a Hawaiian Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree.

I was surveying the hibiscus this past June and wondering out loud with my daughter Charlotte. “I may just ditch this bush and buy a new one blooming now.” I had pruned it and been careful with watering and fertilizing, but this hibiscus was still not thriving.

Charlotte shared, “In ceramics, we talk a lot about how much more you learn from taking a failed project and working to redeem it rather than starting with new clay. You learn a lot.

I pondered that for a bit. Learning from failed projects.

I remember a very early venture into cooking. My mother had never really included us in a kitchen, and having served in the Navy, I often had access to a mess hall. So, I was inexperienced in the kitchen when I began to cook for two.

One evening early in my marriage, I made a dish called Pirate’s Surprise. When I was done, it did not look like the photo on the cookbook page. And because I grew up in a large family, I only knew how to make things in a substantial portion. So, this was a colossal failure. It was a consortium of beans, corn, and peppers. Edible in theory but NOT in practice. There was no salvaging this meal, even with a husband who is known for his capacity to eat unrecognizable items in a refrigerator. Out it went after one attempt.

So let’s just fast forward almost 40 years, and now I can find myself putting food on the table for 20-plus people just using what’s in my cupboard and what’s in the refrigerator. And honestly, I don’t even know how that happens. I was with a friend when I had a big team of students over at the house, and she turned to me and said, you realize, putting a meal together like this is a competency many people don’t have. I was surprised – that’s how it is when you’ve mastered something. It feels easy to you but hard to others.

I do know one thing about learning from failures. When I approach my efforts as experiments and not final exams, I can develop resiliency to try again, confident that small steps over time will prevail in developing skills and, if I realize I have the talent to keep working at it – mastery.

Failures are gifts. They help us open our minds and hearts to new ideas and insights. While my cooking has improved, I am currently working on my gardening skills, particularly on one scraggly hibiscus. 

Post Mortem – the scrabbly hibiscus expired. Sometimes, in our experiments, we have to decide whether to save or scrap. The picture brings me joy, and I am currently enjoying the replacements. I would like to know if I can extend my current record of keeping a hibiscus alive for three years.