They're named Japanese Camellias, but I call them Mississippi Camellias because every self-respecting gardener here has at least one. Varieties of camellias also produce tea, which Mississippians drink by the gallon with cane sugar, ice, lemons, and sometimes a bit of mint, which you always grow in a container lest it takes over your yard like Kudzu. We're also deserving of the name because hurricane Camille did her best to destroy us in '69 but couldn't.
My mother grew pink variegated Camellias on the Meadowbrook-facing side. They tolerate the shade of the many trees my father loved and refused to ever cut. My Grandmother had a vibrant solid pink variety on the side of her St Anne home and my aunt Evelyn had the same at her home in Columbia. It's possible they were bought together at some time in the dim past before I first drew breath.
At Millsaps, there was an impressive hedge of Snow on the Mountain Camellias that flanked the south side of the Christian center. As an undergraduate, I would sometimes pick them as an offering on my way to Bacot in hopes of making someone I knew a little less sad, a battle I fought for many years and eventually lost. As a graduate, after my father died, I would sit there and smoke and think when I wanted to get away from the other theater types for a while and watch New South dorm erected out of the ground, or worried-faced writers drift in and out of the John Stone House.
Camellias are blessed because they stay green all year. They bloom when all the other colors are out of the garden, and most other plants drop their leaves. Compared to, say, Gardenias or Roses, they have a very faint scent, but it's there. The sometimes prolific number of blooms makes it more noticeable in the cooling breezes of fall and winter. It smells like, my grandmother, like memory, like time.
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