The Epitome of Pitiful

I love lilacs. My old house, the $17,000 one in town, had two beautiful lilac bushes. One bloomed light purple flowerets, and the other bloomed dark purple. I would step out of the car and bury my face in the light purple lilacs by the driveway. When we built our house in Outer Backroadsia, I yearned for my lilacs. Hick dug up two bushes from my grandma's yard. Grandma was happy to donate them. She was also an old-school realist. "It takes lilacs seven years to bloom."

It did! Took seven years for my fragrant flowers to pop out. Then the first year of bloomage, the smaller bush froze to death. That's all I can surmise, after it grew seven years to fruition, then went kaput. The other took off. Shoots shot out in all directions. It even bloomed in OCTOBER the year my Grandma passed away. Yes. I have photo evidence:

True, the entire bush did not bloom in the arid scorched earth of early October. Some leaves remained withered from the drought. But a few respectful blooms popped up in honor of Grandma.

Then Hick grew careless in goat-tending. The goat herd was in its heyday. I think we had over a dozen. Of course lilac bushes are like candy for goats. Forget the tin cans and thorn trees and cedar bark. Goats luuuurrrve themselves some lilacs. At times, I caught them munching away on the tender shoots and tasty leaves. Hick swore that he took his eyes off them for only a second, and one got away, then the others followed. Uh huh. Low on a mower sat a piddling goatherd, not paying a bit of attention to his furry, four-legged locusts.

The caprine invasion did not just happen once. Or twice. It was a regular weekly affair. I even caught Hick trying to camouflage the evidence. Okay. The Pony tipped me off. He duct-taped some major branches back together after Goatrude, the ring leader, stood on her hind legs to reach the most succulent morsels, and broke off limbs with her forelegs.

As we came up the driveway last week, The Pony said, "Look at your lilac bush." He was not taunting me. He was actually trying to cheer me up. "It's blooming. See?"

"It looks like a poodle. Lilac bushes should be covered with blooms. Blooms so heavy that limbs hang low. Mine has a few sprigs. It's sad, really. It used to be beautiful."

Now, with a different bad phone camera, I have preserved the evidence of my lilacs decline. The lush spring colors cannot hide the lack of lilacs, or the beat-down those goats gave the grass.

It's the epitome of pitiful.

To add insult to my lilac bush's injury...I looked out the front window and saw what I thought was a hummingbird going to town on my lilac florets. I saw the flutter of wings. Then that critter landed on my lilacs! Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was not a hummingbird, but a large butterfly.

So fragile are my lilacs (and I use the plural loosely), the gossamer weight of a butterfly made that single limb bow like a fiber-optic strand in one of those kid toys that change color. I fumed through the window glass. Shook my fist like a crusty curmudgeon growling at kids to get off his lawn. "Get off, you lout! You great humongous beast! You leviathan of the lepidoptera world! You crushing behemoth! You obese insect Ten Ton Tessie overfed arthropod!"

Okay. I admit that I was a bit out of control. But I was NOT foaming at the mouth. The lack of vigor in my sweet, sweet lilac limb was evident when the wind came whipping off the front four acres. The little lilac flagship was tossed violently by the gusts. The butterfly rode it like a champ, but was thrown after the eight seconds were up. He may just get a big belt buckle for his trouble.

My lilac bush, on the other hand, is not going to win any awards. Maybe the Charlie Brown Christmas tree will send it a condolence card.