Fred And Ethel Bushes

When I first saw the bushes in my front yard burst into wondrous blooms, I was tickled as pink as these flowers. I turned to my husband, who is a fountain of trivia and asked, “What do you call those bushes?”

Have I ever told y’all that when attempting to extract serious information from Mr. Tucker one must phrase the question very carefully … asking exactly what you want to know? It’s true. Otherwise, you get his vaudeville act.

That man had the gall to look me right in the eye (with a straight face, and without missing a beat) and answer, “Fred and Ethel.”

Ba … dum … bum!

Now, I might have gotten the correct answer if I had phrased the question properly: “What is the botanical name of that plant?” I have no doubt he would have told me, “Nerium oleander, an evergreen shrub in the dogbane family.” That is the kind of information that rolls around in his brain. He did finally tell me that it was oleander, but not until he had a good chuckle at his little joke. Now, I have to stop and think to remember that it is “oleander,” because ever since that day we just call them “Fred and Ethel.”

“Awww,” I thought. “Grandmommy had oleander in her yard and now I’ve got it in mine.” I get all silly and sentimental about things like that.

I was so delighted by my hot pink flowers that I ran for a pair of shears to cut a bouquet for my living room … then stopped in my tracks as I thought, “Oleander? That’s poisonous!”

Indeed, I remembered my Grandmother warning us about those plants, telling us never to put any part of them in our mouths. Like she thought we were dumb enough to go around taste testing everything? That’s the silliest … oh, wait … I did taste test everything. I even tested the dog treats, which were surprisingly tasty, so I could see why the dog would “sit pretty” for a chance to snarf them. She had a perfectly good reason for telling me not to eat them.

Grandmommy told me a cautionary tale about those oleander bushes:

A troop of Boy Scouts went camping out by the river and cut some tree branches to use to cook their hot dogs. After they ate, every darned one of them keeled over deader than a post. The tree branches were oleander. Let that be a lesson to you.

That was, indeed, a lesson for me! I decided right then and there that I would never be a Boy Scout!

Maybe you have heard a tale about the “fatal wienie roast?” Probably you heard it happened right in your neck of the woods. A visit to Snopes.com (the great urban legend debunker) will tell you that the fatal wienie roast never happened. However, be advised that oleander is a poisonous plant!

The Snopes article quotes a gardening book from England, published in 1886, which has a forerunner to this urban legend. If you like ghost stories, you can read about Chloe, the ghost of a slave who haunts The Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana. It seems that she took revenge on the slave owners with oleander. She didn’t roast wienies for them, she crushed the leaves and put it in their food. Bet it looked just like oregano!

Oleander isn’t a plant you want in your yard if you have small children or pets. You don’t want to bring a bouquet of oleander inside if your house has as many inquisitive cats as mine does. And, you probably don’t want to roast wienies on an oleander branch! I just admire my “Fred and Ethel bushes” from a distance, as they furiously blossom to block my view of the street.

Other posts you might enjoy:

1. Leave Well Enough Alone
2. Off The Beaten Path. A Step At A Time.
3. Jumped The Gun Again. Will I Never Learn?

Tagged as: Gardening, humor