Sweet Magnolia

 Ah, Magnolia.

MAG-noh-lee-a. Just to pronounce her name, one's tongue has to saunter about in your mouth as your lips leisurely stroll about your face. One has to smile when merely mentioning her name. It's even more enigmatic and sensuous when the syllables are drawn out in a baritone. Mag NOOO lee ah!

The massive and fragrant citrus-scented blossoms are full, buxom beauties that open for my arrival back in springtime Texas. 

I greet her bold, unfurling petals with enthusiasm. I bend the supple boughs down to bring her audacious white blooms to my nose, I inhale and my being rises, enveloped in the scent of a southern spring while in the intimate presence of her petals; pure white appearing fresh in the humid morning air. She grows in confidence, spreading, opening her cool, succulent textured skin as she exposes herself to the smile of the sun.

 

Magnolia is a messy, big-boned gal. Her leaves broad, tough and waxy green with a furry, brassy underside. Her blossoms are not shy, halting in their purity and challenging for the world's attention in their enormity. 

I love a brassy, bold, large-leafed, bright blossomed girl with a sweet scent giving me a show in our backyard.

Like the pleasant spring weather in Texas, Magnolia does not terry long. 

She gives me an eye full, proudly displaying her attributes, then quickly tiring of the grandiosity of the adventure, and then it is over for us.

Her virgin white petals after a day or two, turn into the sensuous brown skin of a south seas island maiden before all the feminine, flowery pretense falls to the ground. Leaving a grenade formed of hard, prickly pods embedded with red seeds, bright and alluring.

My mulching mower makes her leaves, petals and pods all disappear as I tend to the green grass skirting her smooth trunk. I cut and trim around her in the Texas summer heat with but memories of Sweet Magnolia and our springtide fling.