"Prudence and Patience, Hope and Despair...

...and little Hog Island,
Way over there."

So goes a little ditty a friend taught me many years ago. He said it was a device for remembering the names of the islands in Narragansett Bay (or at least some of them; there are lots).

Sure enough, Google yields several sites which identify the jingle as a colonial-era children's rhyme. And there really are islands in Narragansett Bay with those names.

Prudence is the biggish island right under "NARR." 

Patience is the one under the B of Bay.

Hope is the bigger of the two above Patience.

Despair is the one in between Patience and Hope.

Hog Island is off to the left, just off the tip of the mainland,

almost obscured by the smoke from the ship depicted to its right.

It's a very "sticky" rhyme, as the memory experts would say, because of the rhythm, I suppose, and the humorous juxtaposition of the last line with the stolid New England sound of the first bit. It has certainly stuck with me for nearly fifty years now, with no external reinforcement, and it popped into my head as I sat down to write this post. You'll see why in a bit.

As I have on an almost daily basis for the last few weeks, when I was outside yesterday morning I peered intently at the bases of my crape myrtle bushes. I wasn't expecting much. In fact, a couple of days ago I officially gave up on them as victims of the brutal winter we had this year, and made arrangements for them to be cut down, dug out, and replaced.

This, I am sure you recall, was the winter we all learned the phrase "polar vortex." Climate change, we were told, was affecting ocean temperatures and thus weather patterns in a way that caused a looping of the jet stream that was unusually deep and, alas, unusually stable. This downward loop of the jet stream permitted the polar vortex, ordinarily held stable near the North Pole, to slip down and park itself more or less right where I live.

It was pretty horrible. It involved temperatures dipping at least 30 degrees lower than usual, and then just staying there for days and weeks at a time.

I was expecting to lose a lot of plants as a result. All the above-ground parts of my roses (all but one!) were clearly dead, and even when I eventually began to see some sprouts, I was afraid the sprouts wouldn't grow true to type, a not-uncommon problem with winter-damaged roses.

The only rose whose superstructure survived the Polar Vortex.

But one by one, the roses did sprout, and slowly it began to look like the leaves were indeed the right shape and color--and now, I'm even getting blooms that give clear proof that my roses survived.

The drama of rose survival played out slowly over the course of two months or so.  But through all that time, the crape myrtle bushes, my dearly beloved crape myrtles, which bloom like crazy in the stifling heat of midsummer, astonishing my Midwestern neighbors and connecting me deliciously to my Southern roots--these precious crape myrtles only looked deader and deader, as both stout stems and twigs dried out more and more.

Until yesterday morning.

I swear I checked them Wednesday, and they were still thoroughly dead. In fact, Wednesday night I was exchanging emails about where to locate replacement plants. But Thursday morning when I went out to fetch my vacationing neighbor's newspaper I checked one more time...and there it was. New growth. Not on all of them, but on two out of three, which gives me hope that #3 will follow in a day or two.

Look closely through the grass stalks, just to the right of the base.

The new leaves are reddish on top, with greener ones below.

 This is the right hand bush.

This one is easier to see, in among the dead stems. 

Newest leaves on top are still red, others are green.

This is the left hand bush.

No sprouts yet on the center bush.

 

I'll still need to get that dead superstructure chainsawed out of there, but I will have beautiful crape myrtle blossoms gracing the heat of summer this year. If anything, those robust, mature root systems, with less superstructure to support, will be able to really pour energy into the new growth (the fundamental principle of pruning, whether done by gardener or by nature).

 

I quickly called to cancel the order for removal and replacement, while reaffirming the need for radical cutting back.

 

And then my thoughts began to expand from the meteorological and horticultural into other areas.

 It isn't only in terms of weather that we are living in an era of climate change. Technologically, socio-culturally, religiously, politically, and maybe in other ways as well, we seem to be experiencing not just shifting weather fronts (metaphorically speaking), but real climate change.

 

And a lot of superstructure, in all those various areas of life, looks disquietingly like my "dead" crape myrtle bushes.

 

Before we go digging things out by the roots and casting about for replacements, methinks, maybe we should see what a radical pruning might accomplish. Maybe, as with my crape myrtles and roses, the deep, well-established roots would pour robust energy into growth that is both new  and true to type.

But the pruning may have to be truly radical--equivalent to chainsawing the thick crape myrtle trunks.

Prudence and Patience,

Hope and Despair,

And little Hog Island,

Way over there.

 

My friend told me the story--possibly apocryphal--that he had learned about that rhyme. It seems an early resident had named the islands after his own offspring.

To his first child, a daughter, he gave the solid Puritan name of Prudence, and named an island for her.

His second child was also a daughter, and got another solid New England name, Patience--perhaps containing a hint of what the patriarch wanted.

When his third daughter was born, Hope became explicit in the name of both child and island.

But when the fourth child was also a daughter, Despair overcame his spirit.

And then there's little Hog Island, way over there--a break in the pattern, but still an island in Narragansett Bay. Discontinuity and continuity both, all at once.

Certainly in this time of climate change, both actual and metaphorical, we need prudence and patience and hope. Maybe we also need the right amount of despair as well, understood as a kind of creative letting go or giving up that allows room for something new to sprout. Little Hog Island, way over there.

I wonder what that will look like, in politics? in social structures and ways of relating? in church? in economic patterns?

Will it be, like my rose sprouts at first, like the risen Jesus, hard to recognize yet somehow familiar at the same time?

Let's keep peering intently at the base of the dead superstructures and see what we see.