Where Lilacs Still Bloom Page 9

  “Here are the parts of a flower,” I told Nelia. “These are sepals.” I pointed to the complete outer leaf of one of my lilacs.

  “Are they always green?” Nelia asked.

  “Most often a shade of green, yes. But that’s a good question. This inner leaf is called a petal. They usually aren’t green, and they’re flashy. They like to bring attention to themselves. It’s what we often notice first. Now see here.” I had her lean in close. “That area there is called the stamen. It holds a secret powder.”

  “Fairy dust?” Nelia asked. The child had huge blue eyes, as blue as a summer sky, and they looked at me in awe with the possibility that I’d just shown her magic.

  “Not fairy dust, no. But still magical. The tiny case is called the anther.” She repeated the word. “And inside of it is the dust. We call that pollen. Now this other part here”—I pointed to a feature next to the anther—“that’s the pistil. The stamen gives the pistil the pollen, and then the sepals and petals protect it so it can produce a seed. If no pollen makes its way to the pistil—”

  “Is that like a gun, a pistol?”

  “No, no. The word is pistil, p-i-s-t-i-l, and unless pollen reaches it, there can be no seed. Usually birds and bees bring the pollen from a plant they’ve visited, and then they drop it onto the pistil of another plant, just when it’s ready. But I’m doing that with my turkey feather and magnifying glass so I can see it better. It’s so small. I used to cover them, but those I didn’t pollinated just as well, so I gave that up in … oh, nineteen aught three, I suppose. I’m trying to pollinate this one in such a way that one day it will produce a bloom that is creamy white.”

  She nodded, but I suspect I’d already given her too much information. She watched, and with careful hands—her fingers were so small and delicate—she helped me place a metal tag at the base.

  “Can’t you just plant a seed next to the plant you want it to be like?” Nelia asked. “I see yellow and white corn kernels covering the same cob.”

  “You’re a good observer, Nelia. Something every horticulturist needs to be. And it’s true—nature will just pollinate and make its own individual plant that has a mix of this and that. But I want specific things to be different. Color. Whether the plant will be stronger and can resist diseases or will maybe even have a better smell. We have to … select for that.” I was going to say breed for it, but I wasn’t sure if her father would approve of my use of the word and her possibly repeating it. “That’s all we’re doing, really, selecting what nature has already put there for us, and seeing if we can enhance it.”

  “Diseases are bad,” she said.

  “Yes, yes they are.” I wondered what disease had affected her life. Bobby whimpered, lying on his side, his bushy collie tail lifting.

  “Is he hurting?”

  “No. Likely a rabbit dream.”

  Nelia seemed satisfied, but I saw her compassion turning toward wounded things.

  The morning had slipped away, and I looked up surprised to see the sun high overhead. “Goodness. Frank and Fritz will be in for dinner. Quick as a lamb’s tail, let’s see what we can rustle up for them and ourselves.”

  I sliced ham and made sandwiches, put out pickled beets from last season, and filled big glasses with milk. The men ate heartily while Nelia picked at her sandwich. She eyed a platter of cookies on the counter.

  “In this house we clean up our plates in order to get dessert,” I told her.

  She lifted her eyes to me, to the cookies, and then formed new interest in her ham sandwich, which she consumed, though I did think I saw a sleight of hand at her side where Bobby assumed a position next to her chair.

  “No feeding the dog. Or cat,” I said and made it stern. I’d done that with my own children early on and found I didn’t have to repeat it as they got older. “They get fed in the kitchen, next to the stove, after we’ve eaten.”

  “Yes ma’am,” she said.

  “When did you make these, Huldie?” Frank asked, eating his cookie and rescuing the child from my words, though he knew my routine of spoiling after a period of stern. Nelia had a cookie now too.

  “Early this morning, while it was still cool.”

  “They’re good,” Fritz offered.

  “Didn’t think you’d have time what with your lessons going on out there,” Frank said. “Is she a good teacher, Nelia?”

  The child nodded. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, and I gave her a napkin. “Jasmine liked lilacs,” Nelia said then. Her words were soft as the breeze breathing through the wind chimes hanging on the porch.

  “Did she? Do you know what kind she liked?”

  “Purple. We came by your garden and smelled them. Then she died.”

  “Mrs. Klager has lots of purple,” Frank said.

  “I’m sorry about Jasmine. She must have been special.”

  “Maybe we can make one even purpler,” Nelia said. “With that pollen brush. My mama liked purple ones too.”

  “We can try,” I said, pushing a wayward curl around her ear. “We can surely try.”

  I stood up and went to the sun porch. Ludwig Späth, an excellent purple. “Let’s check Frank’s tags and see if we can find the most purple lilac in my garden, and we’ll pollinate dozens, see what we come up with next spring.”

  “Or the spring after that,” Nelia said, bobbing her head, her cookie going up and down with her nodding. Bobby’s head followed her cookie’s every move. “Making flowers takes a long time.”

  “Yes, it does,” I said to this plant of wisdom before me.

  “So does forgetting,” she added, and I knew there was much healing left to do in the life of this precious bloom. I believed that lilacs were just the plants to do it.

  NINETEEN

  CORNELIA GIVENS

  1905

  Cornelia Givens raised her hand to tap on her editor’s door. She checked her attire. She wore a white blouse and gray linen skirt with a whisper of a raised hemline that came to the tops of her high-button shoes. A dark belt emphasized her small waist. When she patted her hair, she felt the pencil sticking out from the bun at the top of her head. She pulled it out, held it in her hand with the card. A watch hung from a gold necklace, stopping modestly well above her breasts. It was her professional dress, and it rarely varied in the two years she’d worked for the Sacramento Bee as a columnist with her own byline. She held a plate of cookies. She took a deep breath and knocked.

  “Come in,” CK said.

  She handed him the plate, and he sighed as he picked up the maple sugar cookie. “What can I do for you that is in any way repayment for these priceless gems?”

  “I’ve received yet another question for the Common Woman column about flowers and plants and gardening in general. I know nothing about these things, especially flowers.” Cornelia tapped the pencil on her card. “I feel I deprive our readers by choosing to ignore these kinds of concerns about the mold on leaves or bugs that eat their rosebushes for lunch. I answer baby questions and indulge myself with recipes I personally love. I get requests for more, but I’m failing the gardeners out there.”

  “Go on.” His eyes gave her their full attention, something she’d seen whenever anyone addressed him. She always felt listened to.

  “I want to make an excursion to improve my understanding of all things horticultural,” Cornelia said.

  “The library is free,” he said, and he grinned.

  Cornelia had studied books about horticulture and botany and recently read an article in Popular Science Monthly, written by the Dutch horticulturist Hugo de Vries, who had come all the way from Holland to visit the Luther Burbank gardens in California. “I’ll keep going to the library, yes. But I’d like to meet real experts and also cover the agricultural exhibit at the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland. There will be dozens of exhibits from around the world related to plants, new crops. We could fertilize two bulbs at one time, so to speak.”

  CK munched on his cookie, a man in tho
ught.

  “I’ve had contact with one exhibitor already, and did you know that the organizers pump water into a marsh to make it a lake to enhance the exposition site and—”

  “You’re wrangling for a feature.”

  She took a deep breath. “I think I’m ready. Some exhibitors support programs of more public gardens.” The Bee devoted many column lines to stories about the betterment of public life, favoring taxes to support it. “While I’m in Portland, I could also interview Thomas Jefferson Howell. He wrote A Flora of Northwest America.” The book had taken the botanist years to complete, and the illustrations were magnificent, but he was somewhat of a recluse. Cornelia was beginning to think most gardeners were—Luther Burbank’s flamboyant promotion of his efforts being an exception.

  “That has possibilities. You’ve contacted an exhibitor? From California?”

  “Not from California.”

  Cornelia handed CK a business card. “Miss L. L. Hetzer,” CK read. “A woman?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Looks to be quite the artist, if she drew this sketch herself.”

  Cornelia leaned over to look at the card with him, noting the fine ink drawing she guessed might be the garden the woman worked at back east.

  “She’s a renowned instructor at the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture for Women. In Massachusetts. Apparently all the women learn to draw and do surveying and so on, so they can design estate gardens or public parks.” Cornelia emphasized the public part.

  “I don’t like to be an easy editor. Makes reporters lazy. But I like this idea. And you’re right; you’re ready for a feature piece. Maybe we can emphasize how good landscape architecture brings the country to the people, and that brings people to a city. How it’s a good expenditure of public money to maintain parks. The exposition appears to be on the road to making money by bringing people from back east and all.”

  “That could be another aspect of my feature, the economics of the exposition—as well as gardens. An interview with a woman from an all-women landscape college would be quite unique. I have a few other ideas as well.”

  “Yes, yes it would. All right, you have my blessing. And if you can get Howell to see you, make that happen too. And hopefully”—he shouted after her as she backed through the door—“you’ll get something for your Common Woman column. You can always add the recipe for these cookies.”

  Back at her desk, Cornelia read the letter that had inspired her to suggest the trip to the exposition in Portland in the first place. She intended one of her features to emphasize the importance of nature in memorializing those we love, and what better place to do that than at a worldwide exposition featuring plants and trees?

  “I have leggy lilacs planted by my mother in 1860,” the letter began. “I lived apart from my mother for most of my life, and upon returning for her funeral three years ago, I made the decision to remain in her house. Her lilacs haunt me. The top of the foliage is over six feet high now, while the bottoms are bare as rooster legs. They bloom for only a few days in the spring, and some of the scent has faded. I seek a way to make them pretty, like they were when my mama was young and vibrant and alive. They need to be a memorial for her, and it saddens me to see them disappear the way she did, with faded blooms and the aroma of neglect.”

  Aroma of neglect. The letter-writer’s words haunted Cornelia as she thought about her sickly mother. She never intended to neglect her, but only rarely thought of what her life was like when she’d been young and vibrant.

  She donned her hat over straw-colored hair and grabbed her bag. She’d buy her ticket on the way home, make sure her sister looked after her mother. But first she’d pick up a celebratory bouquet of flowers at the stand outside the office to cheer them all.

  TWENTY

  FAIR

  Hulda, 1905

  How would you like to go to the Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland in June?” I asked Lizzie, Delia, and Martha. I knew Fritz would want to go. We were at the farm, working in the beds. I’d planted rows and rows of lilac starts, and they needed mulching and monitoring, even though they’d long passed their bloom. Nelia and Ruth carried buckets and dippers, walking along the aisles between the rows, pouring life-giving water onto the young roots. I’d acquired the help of a few boys I called my “bucket boys,” so I didn’t have to do so much heavy lifting. Some of the sprouts I’d pollinated had bloomed within two years, but most would take three to seven. The ones that bloomed were finished by Mother’s Day, and a June trip to the fair seemed like good timing, without the rush of pruning, marking foliage, or even harvesting the vegetable garden. Besides, I wanted to see the Japanese exhibit because of their reputation for unique iris bulbs, and I heard that Chile was giving away monkey puzzle trees.

  “What fun!” Delia said. “I hear there are interesting foods being offered there from places like the Philippines. Where is that, anyway?”

  “In the South China Sea,” Martha told her. “More than three thousand islands in all.”

  “I love having a sister who can answer questions like that off the top of her head.” Beneath her straw hat, Martha grinned at the compliment.

  “Speak to your respective husbands about going.” I stretched my back. “Call it an anniversary present. We’ll take you all. Ride the steamer to Portland. I hear there’s a train or streetcar that will take us from downtown to within a block of the exposition.”

  “Or take the train all the way,” Delia said.

  “We’ll let the men decide.” I loved the banter the girls engaged in.

  “Nell Irving’s been teased some by his friends because the fair is at Guild’s Lake.” Delia brushed at a bee. “But he tells them his name is pronounced guild like the skilled trade associations in the old country, and the lake in Portland is spoken like guile.”

  “Is Nell Irving certain he’s not somehow related?” Lizzie asked her sister. “Maybe he has wealthy ancestors he didn’t know about.”

  “If that’s so, we’re probably the only relatives without electricity.”

  Electricity hadn’t arrived in Woodland yet, and I’d heard that the exposition featured a display of over a hundred thousand light bulbs that surrounded the exhibit buildings, making it like day when it was night, man’s efforts diminishing the glow of the stars. I couldn’t imagine starlight being drained by electric bulbs. I hoped our community never suffered such a bleaching of the night sky, though I’d be happy enough to have light bulbs illuminating my seed catalogs on a rainy winter night. The thought of how man transforms God’s creation brought Barney Reed to mind. We had our fair share of disagreements about man’s—or woman’s—role in changing creation at this week’s Bible classes.

  “Oh, look at this!” I told the girls. “Look! Come here! It’s got five petals! Five!”

  My daughters hovered around, staring at the bloom I held in my palm. “So it does,” Lizzie said. “Is it from one of the Lemoine?”

  “Yes, oh yes. I can’t believe it. It’s better than the apple. Just look at that!” I inspected every single bloom on that bush but only found the one with five petals. I marked it, then moved to several others. “I’m just amazed. Five. If I can get five, then six, seven.” I turned to them, tears brimming. “Twelve petals is possible.”

  They’d moved on, Lizzie looking at a dahlia, and the other two chatting about what they’d wear. I felt separated, apart.

  “Imagine that. Five petals,” I repeated as I approached them.

  “You sound surprised, Mama.” Martha turned toward me. “It’s quite a feat.”

  “I know I raved it could happen, but I didn’t really know. It’s all experimental, so nothing is certain.” I could hardly wait to tell Frank when he came back from the Bottoms where we still kept the cows. “I should write to Luther Burbank and tell him.”

  I caught Lizzie rolling her eyes and corrected myself. “Oh, I’m just piddling around with that idea. Now, what will you girls wear?” I said, hoping to be invited back in
to their conversation.

  “Will you please dress in something fashionable?” Lizzie pulled her garden gloves off. “I’ll even make it for you.” She grinned.

  “Fine. But nothing requiring a tight belt or a too-big bustle. I like loose, and remember, I’m shaped like a pickle.”

  We chatted about what we’d wear, what we’d take with us, how long we might be gone, and I kept my mind with them. After all, the fair had been my idea. But my thoughts kept slipping back to the five petals on the purple lilac and my wish that my daughters understood my enthusiasm for my success.

  Fred worked for the steam company, having started there shortly after he and Lizzie married, so he’d have to arrange his schedule. Nell Irving needed someone to milk their cows for a couple of days, as would we. Bertha’s husband, Carl, would probably do it. We’d have to move the cows up to Martin’s Bluff before we left. The trip meant additional work, and I suspect that extra work was a reason we didn’t let ourselves do entertaining things much. It took so much energy to get to bliss.

  Frank teased that our intimate moments were limited by the same philosophy. In Frank’s mind, whatever it took for hugs and kisses to be the result was well worth the effort. I believed that too, but practicality and fatigue often ruled my roost.

  June 20 opened with the usual mist over the river. We congregated at five o’clock in the morning on the shoreline, ready to board the sternwheeler Mascot. We could come back to Woodland on the same day and arrive home in the dark, but we’d decided to spend at least three days at the exposition and would have two nights at a Portland hotel.

  Once on board, Fred reveled in his passion—steamboats. He began explaining everything about the sternwheeler to us, providing intriguing details as though the boat were a character in a book. “One hundred thirty-two feet long. Beam is twenty-four feet, and the depth of the hold is five feet five inches.” Fritz listened intently. Our son hadn’t shown much interest in steamboating, but he did love the river, loved to fish, loved to take a raft out and let it drift him like a leaf on a lazy stream, and never complained about the trek back upriver tugging his raft along the bank.