Flower Friday : : Abutilon

We've had various versions of this plant, commonly known as 'Flowering Maple' in our garden in Berkeley but never one as eye catching as this one growing by our porch here in Santa Rosa. I feel the people who planted this garden must have been interested in unusual varieties of many common plants. 

A few months ago, at about the same time as we tore out a bench built into our lower deck adjacent to where this plant is, we realized that it was very unhappy, possibly even dying. Getting a good look at the ground underneath it, we realized that the already steep slope underneath the deck had eroded to the point where any water from the irrigation system just ran off before it reached the roots of the abutilon.

In the course of building up a little terrace for the abutilon, OilMan noticed water coming unchecked out of a large drainpipe under the deck. That led to investigations resulting in the discovery of the large leak in a pipe under some stairs on the other side of the property. This was the leak that had been causing the potholes and puddles at the bottom of our driveway...the problem we had been trying to fix since we moved here and were assured by neighbors that former owners had also had no luck in fixing.

What started out as a fairly simple project to build up some dirt under the abutilon eventually revealed water leaking out of drain pipes on both sides of the property at the rate of a couple of gallons of water an hour. 

Now, with the help of our friend Dan, the leak is fixed, a major headache has been cured and the abutilon is thriving again. There seem to be a million reasons why things die without warning in our difficult soil , steep hill and sometimes desert-like conditions. Usually there isn't much hope for them by the time we realize they are in their death throes, but this abutilon not only gave us some ample warning but also pointed the way to a problem we had been trying to solve for years.

We're very grateful to it, and it rewards us with lots of beautiful veined bell-like flowers.