Boring Beauty

What bores some of us half to death makes others rush for the camera and take photos in the rain. That would be me, on a damp Vancouver sidewalk, just before jumping on my plane back to New York.

I have often seen the bedraggled, long dark leaves of evergreen clematis, here in New York, where they are shown off proudly by their owners, and I wonder silently, Why? And once near the Aegean in an otherwise jewel-like little garden where jasmine was in full bloom. Again, Why? At a conference about greenwalls in Vancouver last year it was touted as a great plant to use for screens. Why???

Then March rolled by, and suddenly here were hedges of a gorgeous white flower, in full camelia-scent, under the monotonous slaty skies and the ubiquitous emerald that is between-season in British Columbia.

Oh.