My husband still admires my backside – which seems to be holding up better than my front side. Like people, some plants look lovelier from their backside – when breezes lift their leaves and expose their unusual undersides. Like Marilyn Monroe’s dress in The Seven Year Itch.
I’m thinking of Ligularia Desdemona – so alluring its beauty incites jealousy. My husband, who knows nothing about gardening but helps with the heavy lifting, was helping me plant this in a shade bed, and I pointed out the dark burgundy underside on the leaves. “Too bad you can’t plant this upside down,” he said.
In spring, the new leaves emerge beet-red, fade to greenish-bronze on top, and remain purple on the undersides. Even the stems are purple. As if that isn’t enough, in late summer, electric yellow, daisy-like flowers appear on long burgundy stems. Still, for all that, the underside is where all the action is.
That’s also the reason I wanted Chocolate Eupatorium. The top and side views are lovely enough and reveal their deep, saturated dark chocolate – purple leaves and stems, but the real drama is on the underside of the leaf, which is so loaded with color that it illuminates the tops of the leaves. Being top heavy they need help staying upright. I can’t help think of my Great-aunt Ida whenever I’m staking then. I only saw her at Christmas, but she had a holiday headlock that held me tightly to her large bosom – so pendulous that they resided at her belt. Air was hard to come by there, and I wondered if my release would correspond with the amount of oxygen that remained in my lungs. Luckily, I had four other siblings, and she’d release me and move on to them. All of us emerged gasping and slightly blue.
In fall my Eupatoriums are pumping out huge flower heads made up of hundreds of miniature white flowers all abuzz with bees and butterflies.
While admiring my assets the other day my husband made this pronouncement: “You have a bionic butt. It shows no signs of aging.” It’s probably from squeezing my cheeks through years of client deadlines, not to mention his snoring. Some women hold tension in their necks, some in their backs – I hold it all in the backside. But, if it keeps up, that just may remain the loveliest in the end. Just maybe.