Sally Breslin: My Life: I BEGGED RHODA TO LIVE!

I swear that Kay, one of my neighbors (and by “neighbor” I mean she lives about a half-mile away) could grow coconut trees in her yard, she has such a green thumb. But if a green thumb means someone is good at growing things, then I must have a brown one, because everything I try to grow eventually turns that color.

Kay has, among other impressive plant life, these huge, flowering bushes in her yard. Every spring, they have so many gorgeous blooms on them, they can be seen from the farthest end of the road. One day, as I was walking my dog by her house and spotted her out in the yard, I asked her what they were. She said rhododendrons.

I knew I’d never be able to remember rhododendrons by the time I walked back home, so I did what I usually do when I want to remember something – I used word association. The first thing that popped into my mind was actress Valerie Harper. Why? Because she played a character named Rhoda on TV for years, and I figured if I could remember Rhoda, I could remember rhododendrons.

Although I have a long history of killing plants, often just by looking at them, I became obsessed with having a rhododendron bush/shrub on my front lawn. As luck would have it, I was in the garden department at Walmart one day and there was a huge sale on bushes and shrubs.

“Do you have any of those Valerie Harper shrubs?” I asked the clerk.

He looked at me as if I were speaking in ancient Egyptian.

“Oh! I’m sorry,” I said. “ I mean a Rhoda...um, rhododendron.”

He led me to the selection. There were white ones and pink ones, which were nice, but then I spotted a bright red one. It was marked down to $12 and was already about three feet tall and in a big plastic tub.

“How big do these things grow?” I asked the clerk.

“Oh, they can get to be as wide as 25 feet across,” he said.

Excited, and picturing my front lawn overrun with beautiful red rhododendron flowers, I bought it.

The minute I got home with my precious shrub, however, I began to feel panicky. I just knew I was going to kill it. No matter how kind I was to it or how much I babied it, experience had taught me its days were numbered. Soon, it would be brown and shriveled, gasping for its last breath, all because it had been unlucky enough to be purchased by me, the Lizzie Borden of plant caretakers. So I put it in the garage for the time being, not daring to touch it.

When I told Kay I’d bought a rhododendron, she said, “Great! When you’re ready to plant it, just let me know and I’ll help you!”

Her offer made me feel much better. I knew she could grow plants and flowers that looked as if they had jumped off the covers of landscaping magazines (while I couldn’t even grow mold on bread), so if my rhododendron received her magic touch, it was guaranteed to receive a stay of execution and survive.

But just as I was trying to pick out the perfect spot on my front lawn for my new shrub, some workers arrived to install my new home-generator system.

“We’re going to have to run a gas line from your underground propane tank to the generator,” one of the guys said, “ so we'll have to dig a trench across your lawn.”

The next thing I knew, construction vehicles descended upon my property and my front lawn ended up resembling a replica of the Erie Canal – if someone had filled it with mud. It was not the best time, I decided, to plant my precious shrub. I would have to wait until I had an actual front lawn again.

So the rhododendron remained in its plastic tub in my garage. I watered it, I sang to it, I fed it...and every day I begged it not to die.

And for a month, it thrived and grew in its tub. I was excited. Every bud, every new green leaf felt like a personal victory to me. And as my yard finally began take shape again with new loam and grass seed put down, I was counting the days until I could call Kay and tell her the shrub was ready to be planted.

But then something unexpected happened. The temperature outside shot up to nearly 100 degrees for the better part of a week. That meant the temperature inside my locked-up garage was hot enough to roast a Thanksgiving turkey. Even worse, during that time, I got really busy on a project inside the house for a few days and forgot to water my poor rhododendron, still sitting in its pot out in that stifling garage.

I know, I know...I should have been arrested for felony plant abuse.

When I finally went out to the garage, there was my once lovely shrub, brown and dried up. There wasn’t one green leaf left on it. Panicking, I called Kay, but there was no answer. So I called another friend who also was good at growing things.

“Dig a hole, fill it with water and plant the shrub right away,” she told me. “It might be okay if the roots are still viable.”

So I rushed out to the front yard and dug a hole, filled it with water and planted the shrub. Then I waited for it to show any signs of life.

I'm still waiting.

That was a couple of years ago. Poor Rhoda is so brown and dried-up looking, even the squirrels point at her and laugh.

Still, I’m seriously thinking about buying another rhododendron when they go on sale again. Then I'll ask Kay if she'll plant it for me.

In her yard.

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Sally Breslin is an award-winning syndicated humor columnist who has written regularly for newspapers and magazines all of her adult life. She is the author of several novels in a variety of genres, from humor and romance to science-fiction. Contact her at: sillysally@att.net.

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