This is the introductory essay from this week’s issue of my weekly newsletter, Life Is So Beautiful. The entire newsletter, including links to five things I thought were beautiful, can be found here. – HH
It’s 6:30 in the morning, and I am cutting down Camilla bushes. In some parts of the south, that sentence alone is enough to have me convicted for heresy. Camelias are prized here, and for good reason. Their rose-like blooms in the fall and winter, are bursts of hope in otherwise dreary times of the year. They are one of my favorite flowers – their blooms have seen me through many a seasonal affective disordered depression.
But these particular ones have not been happy for years. They are on the south side of my house, having once edged our patio with blooms. Our first two winters here they bloomed nearly nonstop.
But that was when they were under the shade of the neighbor’s backyard Live Oak tree. Over the pandemic, our neighbor moved away and his successor waged war on all the trees in their yard, including the live oak that had given us, and our camellias, much needed shade.
They have not bloomed since then. Their leaves are sun-scalded, and while they still grow, it is as mere evergreen shrubs, a shadow of their full glory.
So it is August, and I am putting them out of their misery. They were once thriving, and then things changed and now the kindest thing to do for them is to take them out. The shade is never coming back. They would, if I left them, just struggle in the blistering heat every summer. It feels a bit like euthanizing a favorite pet, honestly. Like it’s the most caring thing you can do.
If we were starting from scratch, I probably wouldn’t buy new camelias—I tend to focus our shrubs on native plants that benefit our pollinators, and that can grow without interventions. But this winter I will buy a few to replace the ones I cut down and plant them in the wooded area at the back of our yard. Both so I can get my winter roses, and so they can know the joy of blooming where they can thrive.
As I’m cutting down the camelias at this early hour before the heat comes in, it occurs to me that a lot of the things I hang on to (like these camelias) are things that once worked for me, but then things changed and now they don’t.
And when things quit working for you, perhaps the kindest thing you can do is to let them go.