Posted by: Louis
on Apr 10, 2010
Daphnes are essential. Early and fragrant flowers, bone-hardy (as long as they get good drainage), deer aren't interested, quick to mature, and in the cultivar 'Carol Mackie', variegated foliage. Here's my 'Carol Mackie' just coming into leaf...
...and into bud.
But Carol has another talent quite beyond any of these admirable but also tidy talents: In her golden years she spreads out with alarmingly appealing abandon. (Ah if only it were the same for humans.)
Here's Carol when she's a big old girl of, oh, twelve.
Completely flopped open and sprawling—but with such defiant style! Look at how the branches at the very heart of the plant coil and writhe.
There's a Gorgon-like intensity to them that only increases with age, as more and more of the younger branches get big enough to "Go Gorgon" on you.
Carol Mackie sure shows that the usual standards of beauty—being tight and dense, perky and colorful, in control and obedient—can sometimes be just the fancy folly of youth.
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