Like the gentle rains

We all know Portia's heart-rending speech, which I thought about when planting (replanting, actually), a standard of Duranta repens by the side gate.

Robert put the original plant in months ago, and while we were gone the gremlins got at the watering system, so when I got back it was twigs.

So when I was out at SearsTown for a haircut (Armando is back in the chicken-catching business, and quite well, thanks), I stopped in and picked up another.

Its other names are golden dewdrop and pigeon flower, but I can never remember much beyond "that little indigo flower that falls in such pretty cascades," though this time I did notice the yellow mini-pop-beads that justify the "dewdrop" part. I guess I've always trimmed the flower stalks before they set their berries.

I was out on the porch looking at it between reading in the afternoon light today when I heard a huge crash at the corner. I ran there and saw a local's rental car, headed east on Olivia, impacted by a German tourists' rental car, north on Center, locked in fatal combat.

No one was hurt. Another neighbor called the cops. I gave the local my cell phone, so she could let her niece's daycare know that all pickup bets were off. I swept debris out of the intersection, brought out glasses of limeade in the hot sun and got traffic around the mess. (At least it was less clogging than the horrible day our mahogany hit the street.)

And after the cop arrived, took statements, called tow trucks and issued reports, I gave the Germans a ride to the airport so they could pick up a fresh car, throwing in a botanical tour along the way. (She was happy to know the Latin names of so many tropical plants; he was not so happy, with his first accident in 50 years of driving.)

They offered to take me out to dinner, but I thought of Portia, and the pure quality of mercy, and declined with many thanks, wished them a much better vacation from here out, shook hands, and went home to my duranta.

"The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppest like the gentle rains from heaven
upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. . . ."