Where Lilacs Still Bloom

by Jane Kirkpatrick

  “I hate to see them go,” I told Frank as we stood on the porch, and I chewed on the side of my finger. I hadn’t done that for years.

  “They need time alone.” Frank took my hand in his and held it, then moved me to lean against him, his arms around me.

  “Oh, I know. Of course they need that. I just mean they’re leaving us.” I sighed. “I wish they’d consider staying on here. I put out enough hints. I guess Roy wants to surprise Lizzie when they get back as to where they’re going to make their home. They certainly can’t move into the boarding house!”

  “They could. But they won’t.” I turned to look at him. He had that little grin, and he wiggled his nose at me.

  “What do you know that I don’t?” I pulled away from him, poked him in his ribs. “Tell me.”

  “They’re coming here to live, Huldie. At least for a while. Lizzie wanted me to wait to tell you until after they’d gone so you’d have something to look forward to.”

  “I always have something to look forward to.” I laughed, then added, “I’m a gardener.”

  Lizzie came downstairs one morning in June to tell me that she thought she might be with child.

  “Lizzie!” I said. “That’s wonderful. When?”

  “At Christmas time, if we’ve calculated right.”

  I counted on my fingers. I shouldn’t have, but a December birth was right in line with an early March wedding. Every mother is relieved about such details as that.

  “Oh, that’s so good. Best to get right on it and have that family. It’ll be like when you Kinder were young and we all lived with my parents. I’ll sew her christening dress. Make a quilt too.” My cup was full.

  “You don’t know that it’ll be a ‘she,’ ” Lizzie said, adding, “We’ll have the baby here, Mama.”

  “Well, I should hope,” I said.

  “But we’ll be moving into our own house soon.”

  “You will?”

  “You know I’ll come by every day. I’ve got my rhododendron hybrids to keep track of.”

  I felt as deflated as an old feather pillow. But I didn’t resist. At least she’d told me, hadn’t kept it a secret so everyone else before me knew. “You’ve already told your sister and father, I suppose.” I bit at the side of my finger.

  “You’re the second. I only told Roy this morning.”

  “Fritz can move back into the house, this way. I’m sure he’ll like that. I never felt good about his being out there alone in the tack room.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Mama. He’s got quite a parlor out there, and no one bothers him. He might not like sharing snores with you and Papa and Martha again.”

  “We don’t always get everything we want,” I said, though I didn’t really believe that.

  A blizzard roared on December 9 when William Mills entered the world. The next morning, a rare snowfall carpeted the ground, covering the garden but leaving ornamental rocks and urns exposed. I pulled on my boots and coat and let Frank sleep. All our cows were dry, so he didn’t have to make the two-mile trek to the Bottoms twice a day now. Instead, he read and looked at garden catalogs with me. I would have liked to stay in bed myself, snuggled up next to him, but the fire was out, and that baby would need a good warm stove.

  I pulled my gloves on and went to the woodshed to let the cats and Bobby out. I loaded my arms with wood and told Bobby to bring the kindling. Nelia and Fritz had been working with that dog to do tricks, and he’d picked up “kindling,” carrying a couple of the thinner pieces of fir in his mouth while I trudged through the powdery snow toward the house. Kittens mewed and purred and followed me up the back steps with dainty feet not accustomed to snow. I stamped my feet on the back porch and dropped the logs in the wood box, took the kindling from Bobby’s mouth, and shooed him inside with the cats rolling back and forth, tails up, mouths open looking for their goodies. “In a minute. Let’s have a little patience.”

  Before stepping inside, I turned to look out at my lilacs. Snow powdered the south side of the branches, making a picture of black etched against white. They could look so dead in winter, those shrubs. But spring would come. That was the promise, that spring would always come and with it new life.

  I heard William crying in his mother’s arms and then the silence of a baby fed, a new family making their way. Frank stood in the kitchen. “I’ll start the fire.”

  My heart could fill no more.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  GENEROSITY

  Hulda, 1910–1911

  March 31, 1910

  Dear Mrs. Klager,

  Thank you for your encouragement about my freelance efforts and for keeping me informed of your own. I trust you and Frank and your children are well, as am I. Your suggestion that we visit Luther Burbank’s farm in California is most intriguing. We will keep each other interested until we find the proper time and date that might find Mr. Burbank at his experimental station and not traveling the country giving lectures. Have you ever thought of giving lectures? I think you are a natural in telling stories.

  The reason I’m writing today is to enclose a pre-publication article about your garden. It will appear in the Oregonian the second week of April. The editor said it was so interesting that he might even take the train to Woodland to see your remarkable garden. I hope that’s so. I did want you to know that you might wish to get those lemons squeezed for the lemonade.

  I have also offered a chance to see your fine gardens to a friend of mine whom I met at the Lowthorpe School. We have corresponded since then, and she has an interest in lilacs. She plans a visit to the West, and I have promised her we will drive to your garden. I hope that is agreeable and that I have not overstepped the bounds of decency by inviting her before I secured your agreement. The date of her visit is uncertain, but I am hopeful it may occur before all the blooms are gone. She’s also wishing to return with one of your cultivars.

  A Mother’s Day celebration is being planned in Sacramento this year, following the events in West Virginia and Philadelphia two years ago. Isn’t it grand that lilacs bloom in time for such a noteworthy occasion? Perhaps when Mr. Klager makes up his donation sign, he might add “take a start home for your mother.”

  Please reply back to me if my visit with my friend will intrude. Otherwise I will plan to see you in person within the next two months.

  Yours with admiration,

  Cornelia Givens

  Post Script: The lilac start you gave me is doing well! It has blooms this year, and I look forward to seeing how many petals it might have!

  “I can’t believe it,” I told Frank. “Look at what Cornelia wrote in this article: ‘It’s always lilac time in the Lilac Lady’s garden.’ That’s just not true. They only bloom at certain times. She knew that. Why would she say that?”

  “Huldie. She’s being poetic. You’re always doing something related to lilacs; that’s all it means. It’s a fine compliment; that’s what it is.”

  “Oh. I just don’t want people to think they’ll always see lilacs in bloom if they come visit.” They’d see dozens of other varieties of plants in bloom, in season, so I hoped it wouldn’t be a waste of people’s time—if they came. A part of me couldn’t imagine people driving a distance to my gardens, not with the price of petrol. The train was more convenient, and those steamboats, but the idea of people taking a day out of their lives to walk among flowers was both amazing and gratifying. Perhaps people did realize how hopeful and healing flowers could be. And I did so want to share what we’d done.

  The article was published just as Cornelia said it would be. They gave it the headline “Where Lilacs Still Bloom.” On the Saturday following the article, in mid-April, people began to come. A trickle on Saturday, people saying they’d read the story and especially liked the idea that I’d propagated my own varieties, nearly ten now, and that I’d done this work without benefit of botany studies or degrees. But Luther Burbank didn’t have a scientific background either, I reminded them, not that I wouldn’t have lov
ed to attend a school or two. I wouldn’t have wasted so many plants, I told people. It’s good to build on the work of others.

  “I had a family willing to support my efforts too,” I spoke to a crowd. “This is not one woman’s garden by any means.”

  On Sunday afternoon, more people arrived from Kelso and Kalama, almost neighbors they were, but none had ever come to my garden before. By the second weekend in May, a day called Mother’s Day, more than twenty cars parked along the road, and I showed them the lilac plantings, pointed out the three surviving Lemoine that had started it all (Cornelia had written of them), and lifted several of Frank’s tin labels. A few people’s eyes glazed over as I gave them more detail than they wanted. I sent them to lemonade on the porch where Lizzie and Delia had been conscripted to serve. Nelia cut blooms for bouquets that she sold for two cents apiece. I told her she could keep the money.

  A couple from Massachusetts, visiting their daughter in Vancouver, thought it would be a nice outing for them to come here on the steamer. They likened my garden to Arnold Arboretum. “They’ve dozens of plants, hydrangeas and azaleas, holly, and lilacs, just like you have.”

  “Oh, surely not. I’ve only a few acres here.”

  “But you’ve created an Eden with what you have,” the man said. “Would you consider allowing us a start? We love lilacs, especially new varieties, and it looks like you have what, four or five?”

  “Ten. So far. But I have so many others I want to develop. A red, for one. Wouldn’t a deep red be astonishing to see? And smell?”

  They nodded, and as we were standing by my newest cultivar creation, I took my pruning knife and cut him a start. “I call this one My Favorite.”

  “I love the magenta color,” the woman gushed. “Double flowers too. Thank you so much!”

  “We’ll be sure to label it ‘Klager My Favorite’ so people will know where it came from.”

  “Could I have a start of your purple?” A woman about my age asked, her voice soft as chamois. I was back on the porch and took my seat in the rocker. I’d been standing and talking most of the afternoon, and my ankles were starting to swell. “My mother planted one beside her dooryard back in Minnesota, and when I smell this”—she inhaled the bloom, closing her eyes—“I am brought right back there to that place. And to her.”

  “Certainly. Frank?”

  He pulled his pocketknife from his vest pocket—we hadn’t even had time to change our clothes after church before people began to arrive—and walked with the woman to the lilacs. She pointed at the one she admired, and he snipped a length with bloom. When they came back to the porch, she said, “Will fifteen cents be enough?”

  “Fifteen cents?” Frank looked at me. “Ah, I submit, whatever you deem fair.”

  “Oh no. I’m happy that you want them. I love hearing how lilacs remind you of your mother.”

  “Leave whatever you’d like in that box there,” Frank said. “If you’ve a mind to.” I frowned at him.

  She started a flood. Others came forward with requests for various snips, and I began to wonder if we shouldn’t have cut them ahead of time or had suckers in water and labeled so people could take whichever one they wanted.

  The lilacs were generous that year, and I loved seeing the faces of people and hearing where they planned to plant them. It was a wonderful day, even though Cornelia and her friend never appeared.

  At twilight, everyone left. We sat, stunned. I put my feet up. “There must have been two hundred people here, just today.”

  Frank rattled the donation box and began counting. He looked up. “Huldie, I do believe we have nearly ten dollars in this box.”

  “Ten dollars? From sales?” That bothered me, it did.

  “And donations,” Nelia said. “I saw people putting coins in who weren’t carrying out any starts. In the line at the privy, people talked to each other like they were old friends, all the while asking where they came from and sharing stories of their lilacs. They were happy to be here. Maybe they put coins in to show that.”

  “Next year we’ll put a second box out, then,” Frank said. “Right beside the hollyhock that winds over the privy. It’ll help pay for moving it to make room for more of your lilacs.”

  “Oh, I don’t think this will happen again. It was Cornelia’s article that brought people.”

  “People talk,” Fritz said. “And what better to talk about than having a fine outing just outside of Portland and down the road from Seattle where you can see as many lilacs blooming as at some famous arboretum back east.”

  The following weeks, more people arrived, and while the lilacs were finished blooming, there were other things to see, and people didn’t seem too upset as they asked about my work. They told me they’d be back next year.

  The other arrival of the summer was Clara Wilke in August, the first child of Delia and Edmond, a new sister for Irvina, born at our home with Dr. Hoffman presiding. The Wilke family didn’t stay long with us after Clara’s birth before heading back to their farm, but I was pleased by their presence while it lasted. That’s what a flower teaches one, to enjoy the moment while you can.

  People did talk, and in 1911 Cornelia wrote another article that was published in a national gardening magazine, and our yard filled up with interested people from as far away as San Francisco and Denver. I wore my apron and walked the grounds with them, happy to share stories of my desire for a deep red lilac. I still worked on that creamy white, and I hadn’t given up on the twelve petals either, but one has to keep finding new things to work toward.

  Cornelia visited that summer, along with her friend Mrs. Shelly Snyder from Baltimore. Mr. Snyder came too. They stayed at the Hobb Hotel at the corner of Davidson and Third the two days they were here, but mostly they were in the garden, or on the porch with Frank and me and Martha and Fritz, when he was home.

  The Snyders were an interesting pair, she with her short skirts, though her ankles were covered, and he with his tightly buttoned suit coat. It was linen, but the weather felt sultry those days in May when they walked my garden. I’d have thought he might have relaxed a bit, but he didn’t. Both had botanical interests, but Mr. Snyder questioned me about my techniques of grafting, then gathering the seeds and growing them under glass. He wanted me to explain what would trigger my pulling out the plant and tossing it. “A terrible color. When I wanted red and got some putrid form of it. Those had to go.”

  She asked questions about the garden design and layout and the shape of the plantings. I chuckled when she asked about the shapes. “You remind me of my young friend Ruth Reed,” I said. “She was always commenting on the shapes of things. I think that’s why she liked my flatiron garden best.”

  “It is the first thing you see when you come into the yard, except for the trees,” Mrs. Snyder said.

  “I hate to iron, myself, but I do it. I figure a garden of the iron shape suggests that woman’s work can be made fun.”

  “Especially if you can get a daughter to do it,” Martha said, but she smiled.

  “I wanted to make gardens for occasions in our child’s life.” Mrs. Snyder let her fingers linger on an azalea. “A first birthday, maybe in a pony shape, if she took up riding. Something with a fishing pond if we’d had a boy.”

  I started to ask her about her children, but Mr. Snyder interrupted. “Do you sell your starts?”

  “She won’t let me,” Frank said. “We’ve two catalog companies wanting cultivars they’d finish and sell.”

  “Why wouldn’t you offer them through catalogs?” Cornelia asked.

  “I like seeing people come here. I do all the work. Why shouldn’t I have the pleasure of seeing firsthand who receives them?”

  I told them about My Favorite and how it and three others had been the true beginning of my lilac breeding. They listened with great interest, but when I asked about their garden, they exchanged looks, and something kept me from asking after their children. He coughed, and she looked down, and then she said they’d been hav
ing a discussion about what to do with the garden and not having great results.

  “It’s a great deal of work,” Mrs. Snyder said, “as you know.”

  I didn’t think the issue was the work. “It is. But good work. I have help. My high-school girls and the bucket boys. Why, you have one of my garden graduates right there in Baltimore. Ruth Reed attends the Peabody music conservatory.”

  “Perhaps she could use summer work,” Mr. Snyder said.

  “She just might. She’s hard-working.”

  “How is she with … elderly people?” Mrs. Snyder asked.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, the two of you aren’t old at all!” I said.

  “Not us, but my husband’s mother. She’s getting on in years and … has quite a bit of say about the garden.”

  “If she’s an opinionated and stubborn woman, well, know that Ruth comes with past experiences for having worked with me. She’d do just fine.”

  I gave them Ruth’s address. Baltimore is a big city, and she might live miles away from the Snyder estate. Still, I imagined Ruth and the delicate but vibrant Mrs. Snyder walking in a garden together, talking about the shapes they could make and fill with blooms.

  THIRTY-SIX

  LIFE LIKE A RIVER

  Hulda, 1912

  They say that life is like a river or the garden, both images to remind us all of seasons, cycles, the rise and fall of living.

  Nelia ran from the postal box to the backyard. With Lizzie and Delia and their families on their own, she’d come home to us. She squealed now, “I’ve been accepted!” I stood with my hoe, pushed my hat back. “Swedish Hospital says they’ll take me!”

  “Did you doubt?”

  Nelia stepped around matted grasses still wet from the spring floods to hand over the letter. She’d graduate in just a few weeks and be gone from this place that had nurtured her through the years. The garden had weathered the spring Lewis River flood, but it had taken lots of hard work, digging and potting dozens of plants that I didn’t think could make it otherwise. Now, with drier soil, she’d soon be working side by side with us. But first, we’d have to celebrate.