In the shadows of a Rose of Sharon

13 days in Oklahoma City in steamy July tends to shrink one’s focus to two or three things: stay cool, stay hydrated and eat something besides ice cream.

The climate slaps you in the face every time you step outdoors; you look up into the towering bowl of sky and trudge across the parking lot with plastic bags full of dirty laundry grumbling at your miserable luck. Wait…. is that a Rose of Sharon in the hotel parking lot?

Extravagant along the walkway, the bush scatters blossoms with the abandon of a politician handing out candy during a Fourth of July parade. I pass by it frequently during my two-week stay, because the bush is alongside the entry to the hotel’s laundry room, and I am laundress to two horsewomen busy working and competing.

The Rose of Sharon feels particularly at home here in this bible-loving land. In a town where every checker at Walmart hands you a receipt along with a gracious ‘have a blessed day’, the haunting lines from the Song of Solomon–‘I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys’– resonate across centuries of faith-filled lives.

But the hardy perennial evokes another past, too, that of the gritty, desperate farmers who lost everything during the Dust Bowl years. In fact, long-time Oklahoman garden columnist Loretta Aaron noted the Rose of Sharon was one of the most popular flowering shrubs during the bleak days of the Dust Bowl when water was at a premium. “It was the summer-flowering shrub in the gardens of our grandmothers. Each bloom would drop down at sundown, and new blooms open on the following morning. Seed dropped to the soil readily germinated, and the seedlings were shared by all. Many of these early plantings can still be found blooming in the city.”[1]

Immortalized in John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, Rose of Sharon takes human shape as the oldest daughter of the Joad family. As the family travels from their devastated farm in Oklahoma across a desolate landscape toward a better life in California, ‘Rosasharn’ focuses on her unborn baby. Ultimately, she loses her baby on the Mother Road but gives life to a stranger by sharing her mother’s milk.

All of a sudden, laundry, and grumbling about it, seems mighty insignificant.

[1] https://oklahoman.com/article/5440043/okc-beautifuls-gardening-tip-of-the-month-rose-of-sharon-is-great-for-okcs-climate

Enjoy these musings & meanderings? Subscribe for email delivery: