I need a few more shade trees spaced strategically around my house and ground. Driving home from work this morning, I spied a shapely, wide-spread specimen up ahead and eased back on the accelerator to get a better look at it. It turned out to be a mimosa, and I laughed out loud.
"Oh! The beautiful mimosas!" my mother-in-law used to exclaim, and it made her son, my husband, crazy. Off he would go into his tirade:
"They have thorns. They have big, sticky flowers that drip all over everything, and it's hard to get off - absolutely RUINS the paint job on your car!! And to top it off, they have a million seed pods, which all take root, and you end up with those damn trees coming up EVERYWHERE in your yard. And you CAN'T GET RID OF THEM!!!"
His mom's been gone for 20 years, but still, just mention "mimosa" and he gets this look on his face - kind of a mixture of disbelief, horror, and outrage. Deja vous - all of the above - makes you want to look over your shoulder at the pick-up to see if maybe they accidentally loaded one or two when you stopped at the garden store this morning.
He's not completely unreasonable. Once he winds down, wipes his brow, and takes a couple of deep, cleansing, calming breaths, he is able to concede that the trees with their feathery branches and pink blooms are pretty, despite being the horrid, nasty things that they are.
I can't wait for him to come home so I can tell him about the beautiful mimosa I saw today.
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