Resiliency is the ability to bounce back – to recover, to persevere, no matter what. It’s an enviable quality and one we don’t understand well. Kids grow up in a screwed up family – one gets tough, the other gets hurt. Couples get divorced – one partner thrives, while the other flails. A company lays off two people. Two years later one has made an entirely fresh start and looks at the layoff as the kick in the pants that got them to pursue a dream while the other can’t seem to recover. Why? Honestly, I don’t have a clue, but I do have a new role model: Clematis armandii, otherwise known as the evergreen clematis.
Here’s a clematis I planted over a year ago that’s just starting to recover from the trauma of being transplanted:
This baby is barely hanging on to the trellis
After more than a year in the ground it’s about 14 inches high. To be fair, it’s not an evergreen, but still – kinda wimpy, don’t you think? C’mon li’l guy, you can do it!
Now, here’s Clematis armandii:
This baby's up and over the fence already - and it's FLOWERING!
This plant has been in the ground about 2 months. It was a 1 gallon plant and it was about 12 inches high when I planted it. Despite the rainiest spring EVER, it’s already topped six feet – see the little frond sticking up above the fence? And this, despite the fact that when it first started climbing the trellis I tried to help it hold on and broke its longest frond by mistake (sorry buddy). Now THAT is resilience.
You are a wacky plant nut…