Where Lilacs Still Bloom (11 page)

“I’m not. Just wistful watching all my charges grow.”

“The ones with green stems, or the two with purple skirts and aprons?” she teased.

“All. But this morning, the skirted kind.” With our hoes we walked the wood-chipped paths toward the apple orchard.
I heard the distant whistle of the
Mascot
as it steamed down the Lewis. “It’ll be new and different for you with them gone, won’t it, Martha?”

“Yes,” she said after a pause. “I’ll miss them. But in some ways, they’ve been gone for a long time already, their lives wrapped up in Nell Irving and Fred. All that courting, sitting in the lamplight in the evening on the porch, then telling each other what was said all over again afterward. Don’t say I said this, Mama, but sometimes I think they’re daft they get to giggling so.”

“It’s love, honey. That’s what makes us laugh at the slightest hint of joy. They’ll settle down once they’re married and likely be more open to their younger sister’s and brother’s lives, not so taken with their own. Especially now, with the wedding. It’ll happen for you too, one day, Martha.”

“I’m not so sure.” Her brown eyes looked deeply into my own earth-toned eyes. “You and Daddy aren’t much different now than I imagine you were when you first married. You laugh and tease each other, and he puts his arm around you for a squeeze, even when your hands are full of flour dough.”

I laughed. “That’s when he’s most likely to give me squeezes.” I leaned into her as though to share a secret. “Your father is a joker, and it’s my surprised squeal he likes the most. Did I tell you about the time he exchanged one farmer’s entire herd of cows with another farmer’s? On Halloween? Can you imagine those two farmers’ surprise at their morning milking?”

She laughed. “It’s what I’d want if I ever did find a man to love. I like a sense of humor, and I like surprises.”

“I didn’t realize that. I’ll keep that in mind.” I thought then I should plan a surprise for her on the girls’ wedding day.

I walked the orchard, checked on new grafts I’d made, then on to the lilac nursery. We had five acres here, and I imagined one day every inch might be covered but for the paths weaving through the ornamentals and trees. Crossbreeding was tedious. I might get only one plant out of four hundred that was reusable for breeding. The rest would be thrown out. Frank said he didn’t mind the work or the toss-outs so long as he had three meals a day and my hand in his for a time on the porch at dusk. “One day I’d like to get an automobile,” he told me, “but other than that, watching you work toward that cream lilac or the one with many petals is enough wealth for me.”

“One day.” I felt a little guilty spending so much money on the Lemoine. An auto would have made his life easier.

I looked over the petals on an amethyst-colored lilac to see if there might be even one bloom with more than four petals.

“Mother!” It was Lizzie. “Can you please forget those lilacs? You haven’t heard a word Delia and I have said to you, have you?”

I might have blushed. “No, now, well, I was tending my plants for a minute.”

“It’s been two hours, Mama. There are other things that need tending.”

“I know, I know. Come along, then, let’s see what might be ready for your bouquets and the table dressings too.”

The girls led me back toward the tulips where Martha knelt, then stood, the three girls “filling me in” as they called it, the way I filled in an open garden space with new plants. “Just stay here now, Mama,” Lizzie said. “Don’t go off with your hoe. What about lavender for our bouquets?” I nodded. Whatever they wanted would be fine. I owed them that.

I had humbling to do about being as attentive to my children as I was to my flowers. Mr. Burbank wrote a book professing that raising plants was like raising children. Both were vexing and a privilege. He didn’t have family as far as I could tell, besides a mother who he brought out west to visit now and then—but otherwise, he was alone with his workers and his plants. That was enough for him. I wondered if one day it would have to be enough for me if I outlived my Frank.

I
n early June, just two weeks before the wedding, I startled awake. “Frank. Your horse must be out.”

“Huh?” He woke groggy from my elbow poke. I heard a horse whinny, and Frank said, “That’s ours, in the barn.”

“Cows, then,” I said. “Can’t you hear them?”

I rose and grabbed my robe, tossing my long braid outward, feeling the pressure of it along my back. “They’re running around the house,” I said. Bobby—we named all our dogs Bobby—our new dog, had started to bark from the potting shed, and I shushed him through the open window. No need to rile those bovines any more than they were.

“Not our cows,” Frank said as he pulled on his pants and slipped the suspenders over his bare shoulders. “They’re on the Bottoms where they belong.” He peered into the dawn. “Not our horses either.”

“Horses?” Our neighbors had horses. My brother, Emil, living next-door, he had horses. I headed down the stairs, grabbing a broom from the kitchen before scampering out the door. Frank followed with a lantern, and I guessed he had bare feet just as I did, the wet grass matting at my toes and swishing against my nightdress. I couldn’t see them but could hear the thundering hooves. Or it might have been my heart wondering when they’d come out of the darkness toward me, rush right over me. Horses could do that in their confusion.

Where are they? The lilac nursery!

“Frank, try to push them away from the lilacs!”

“I don’t see them,” he shouted back.

How many were there? Three? Five? A dozen? The earth shook.

Where had they come from? “Hayah!” I shouted when Frank’s lantern cast a quick light across what looked to be a sorrel’s back. They headed to the nursery! “Push them out, Frank! They’ll destroy the Lemoine!”

The sound and the smell of them swished by as they galloped toward my brother’s home, but the herd kept going, so I don’t think they were Emil’s. I hoped they weren’t, because I’d be giving him choice words if he’d failed to keep his barn door closed.

“Maybe they bypassed it.” Frank’s breath came in short gasps. He held his lantern high as he approached. I knew what he was talking about.

I hopped through the tall grass onto the path, tears already forming. All that work …

“No. Look.”

Frank set the lantern down beside the Lemoine where I knelt.

“Look what they’ve done. Just look.”

“What?” Frank said. “I can’t see well enough.”

But I could. The horses had destroyed two more Lemoine lilacs, the roots ground into nothingness by their massive hooves. “They’re gone. Two more French lilacs dead, and dozens of starts trampled too.”

“We’ll see if we can salvage them, Huldie. Don’t cry now. Don’t fret. Things will look better in the morning.”

I held my head in my hands. “Frank. Three. That’s all that’s left.” I lifted the oblong metal labels that marked the survivors: Mme Casimir Périer (Lemoine, 1884), a beautiful double white; President Grévy (Lemoine, 1886), a double blue; and a splendid purple labeled Andenken an Ludwig Späth (Späth, 1883) made up the triumvirate. All that was left.

“I’m not sure I can do anything with three.” I’d wondered if I could do anything with fifteen, let alone seven, then five. But three?

“Now, now, I submit that these are three more than you had two years ago at this time,” Frank said. “All is not lost. You’ve already cross-pollinated a few from the others, the wrecked ones.”

“Not enough to even notice.” I shook my head. “All I can introduce as new now are these three. I so wanted to see a creamy white with many blossoms in my lifetime, Frank. And now … seven years for a bloom after I’ve crossbred …”

“You’ll keep busy.” Frank patted my shoulder. “Waiting isn’t done alone. There’ll be work to do. The time will fly, you’ll see. Right now, there’s the wedding. Think about that.” All I cared about was my lilacs and how I hadn’t saved them.

Frank was right, of course. That Sunday I thanked the Lord for saving me three—Frank called them my Magical Three—and I asked for patience. It’s what I would need to produce the bloom I imagined in my heart. I could envision a sea of white each spring. I’d just have to be patient in my crossbreeding and learn better how to wait. And I’d fence in the nursery areas. I ought to have done that before.

“Not sure asking for patience was a good idea,” Frank said after I told him what I’d prayed for. “Seems to me as soon as you ask for patience, you get something coming down the pike that requires an extra dose of it.”

“I figured I was safe. After all, I’ve already had the misery that spurred the request.”

“Maybe. But misery loves its company, and I don’t want it settling in with you. I want that special place next to you, not a plant or two.”

The next morning we walked home from church with
our children in front of us, the girls squired by their young men. Those children were my petals, every one of them. I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath, sliding my arm through Frank’s.

“Let’s get a better look at how the rest of the yard fared,” Frank said when we arrived home. The girls rustled up dinner, and we could hear their chatter with their beaus through the open windows as Frank and Fritz and I walked the paths.

Irises had been clipped by the shod hooves. They’d missed the peonies, though they were already beginning to splay out. A few daylilies looked as though a fat cat had squatted in their midst. Horses hadn’t had time to rip off an oriental poppy as they fled through the yard. Most of those blooms had already faded, but they still lent a color point for the eye. I spied the break in the neighbor’s fence on the other side where they’d trashed through. A flash of words spewed from my mouth, and Frank cautioned me. “Now, now,” he said.

“I’d like to say those things to my neighbor.” But I wouldn’t. Not until I’d had time to think it through. Instead, I told Frank, “As soon as we can afford it, let’s think about one of those automobiles where the horsepower is contained inside metal. And offer the neighbor a ride now and then so he might be inspired to rid himself of those horses.”

Frank grinned. “Who would have thought that horses trampling lilacs would lead to such a windfall for me!” Then he looked contrite and added, “Course it’s a terrible thing they
did to your lemons, Huldie. But you’ll make lemonade of it, after all, I submit. Yes, indeed, that’s what I submit.”

We could not have asked for a more glorious wedding day, even if the gardens could have been in a little better form. I’d tried to save seeds from the two equine-destroyed lilacs, but to no avail. I would have to focus on the three remaining. But that would be later, after the wedding, after things had settled down in my daughters’ lives, and I could concentrate on the lilacs.

On my daughters’ wedding day, the sun shone bright and birds twittered in the magnolia and the holly trees. The flatiron garden plot was awash with blooms of many colors. Pansies and petunias bobbed their heads. Marigolds trotted around the perimeter of that iron-shaped planting. Lavender lent its sweet smell and promise of abundance to the occasion. I would carry a nosegay of lavender, and we handed out small bouquets to women as they arrived for the ceremony, at least those who didn’t have a flower already on their person.

I looked out at the gardens the morning of the ceremony while ironing the girls’ dresses. Delia’s dress was satin, and it showed the wrinkles more than the linen that draped Lizzie’s slender frame. Both girls had cape bodices and ragamuffin sleeves, though Lizzie’s sleeves were lace and Delia’s all satin.

I finished ironing and hung the girls’ dresses from the top
railing of the stairwell, so their long gowns fell as though a waterfall. Martha and I worked in the sunroom with the lavender, and she reminded me as we created our bouquets that supposedly lavender represented a “woman in her prime, someone devoted.”

“Really? I guess I knew that flowers had certain meanings, just not what they are.”