The First Camellia Blossom

Jimmy's father, James Lovett Dewar, Senior, was a serious-minded man with one hobby: he loved gardening. He always had a vegetable garden, and the tomatoes he produced were legendary, but his real passion was for his camellias. He was fascinated by all the different varieties, and he enjoyed rooting them from cuttings, and grafting new specimens to existing bushes. Many of his camellias date back to the forties and the fifties.

The house where Jimmy grew up, and where Mr. Dewar tended his camellias, was recently moved, so that the large lot it was on could be used for an apartment complex expansion. This all happened at the same time we were landscaping our yard, and Jimmy decided that if there was any way to do it, he wanted to try to save some of his father's camellia bushes, and have them moved to our house.

Son-in-law Patrick, who can do anything, borrowed a monster machine from Gary Minchew, that can scoop up very large plants and their whole root systems without injuring them. Even so, the survival statistics for transplanting such old large camellias is not good. But we did it, hoping for the best, and thinking that if we got just two or three out of the ten we moved to live, we'd be happy.

They were moved in the heat of the summer, when the drought was at its worst, and Jimmy and I have been holding our breath that they'd make it. Today, nine look very healthy, and one is struggling, but we haven't given up on it. They all have buds on them, and we've been waiting excitedly to see what the flowers will look like. Jimmy has said over and over that he wished just ONE bloom would open before we go back to Atlanta for his transplant. Every day he goes out to check.

When we got back from Atlanta late this afternoon, we made a beeline for the backyard , and there on the top of one of Mr. Dewar's prized camellia bushes, we found one gloriously perfect pink blossom.