GARDENING : MUSCLEBOUND MISUNDERSTANDING OF IMPATIENS' NEEDS.

Byline: Joshua Siskin

About a year ago, a friend of mine named Michael Lulyon, who operated a small gardening business in the Valley, moved out of state. Before his departure, he was kind enough to turn his accounts over to me - although, considering the large headaches and small profit involved, I sometimes wonder if I should have agreed to accept this free business.

On the morning he left town, Lulyon stopped off to deliver a notebook, which contained crucial tidbits of information about his customers. For instance, under ``Mrs. Henderson'' he had written ``skittish black Labrador in yard; make sure you close gate coming and going so he doesn't get out,'' and next to ``Mr. Peabody'' he noted that ``nutsedge is entrenched in flower beds at entry; keep heavily mulched and scratch out new leaves as soon as they appear.'' Far more interesting, though, were his philosophical/religious musings regarding plants, people and the interaction between them.

Among the properties tended by Lulyon were four apartment buildings, all owned by the same individual and each managed by a different weight lifter. (The four of them were friends.) Each building had a long strip of green lawn in front, behind which was a bed containing the usual species encountered at such sites: crepe myrtle and evergreen pear trees; pittosporum, escallonia and hibiscus shrubs; a perennial collection of day lilies, agapanthus and society garlic; a ground cover of balcon ivy geraniums for the sun and, for the shade, impatiens.

Lulyon could not get over the deep love expressed by his weightlifting managers for impatiens. As wonderful as their impatiens looked in the shade, they thought it only reasonable that impatiens should also grow in the sun. Lulyon would have to keep reminding them that impatiens were not meant for exposure to too much Valley sun; they simply couldn't handle the heat.

In the notebook Lulyon handed me before he left, I recently discovered these somewhat cryptic notes: ``Samson true strong man, unlike weight lifters; impatiens grow in any soil, just protect them from the heat; Samson not physically large, strength came from God; impatiens need no fertilizer or special treatment of any kind, don't cry for attention, just grow; Samson only prophet who seldom spoke; actions spoke for him; impatiens always beautiful and strong, envied by weight lifters; name of Samson opposite of Delilah; sun vs. night; Samson brought down when hair cut, since essential nature was altered, vow was broken; impatiens won't grow in sun because of shade-loving nature; impatiens defy nature, flowers not used in reproduction, hidden flowers form seeds; weight lifters defy nature, essential nature is hidden, gentle.''

In order to understand Lulyon's notes, I had to go back and read the story of Samson (it's in Judges, chapters 13 to 16) and its commentaries and research the reproductive botany of impatiens.

It was as useless for the weight lifters to expect impatiens to grow in the sun as it was to expect Samson to keep his strength once his locks were sheared. Samson was a Nazarite, whose vows included the promise never to cut his hair; once his hair was cut, his promise to God was broken and his essence of strength - which came from God - was altered. Samson, whose name comes from the Hebrew word for ``sun,'' was brought low by Delilah, whose name literally means ``of the night.'' Delilah's essence was the opposite of Samson's. A plant that grows in the shade, such as impatiens, will die in the sun, since putting it there is a violation of its essence.

Narcissistic weight lifters envy impatiens because they are plants that are always beautiful, always in bloom. However, weight lifters don't understand that impatiens are easy-care plants, not requiring any human assistance to achieve their beauty; this is the opposite of the weight lifter, who must spend many hours in the gym each day in order to keep his muscles in shape.

Impatiens differ from most plants in a significant way. The flowers of most plants are used to attract insects that pollinate them so that fertilization of the ovule can take place and seeds can be produced. Yet the showy flowers of impatiens produce few, if any, viable seeds. Instead, impatiens undergo cleistogamy - hidden fertilization - whereby flower buds that never open are self-fertilized internally, eventually forming seed capsules that, at the slightest touch, explode.

So, too, weight lifters, for all their external muscle, are usually gentle on the inside. Just as the hidden flowers of the impatiens provide the reproductive energy of the plant, the hidden gentleness of weight lifters is their true strength.