Some
people say that only children can fully appreciate the seasons of the year
because only they retain that magical connection to the other side that
allows them to bask in the gloriousness of it all. In the summer, they
play until the sun finally sets late in the evening; in the fall, they
frolic through the piles of leaves, and in the winter they take advantage
of the abundant snowfall. But spring is a season that I'm claiming as my
own because I don't think that children can fully appreciate the subtle
beauty of the world unfolding around them.
I know
this because, when I was a child, I don't recall ever thinking twice about
what I perceived as the worst time of the entire year. The black flies,
and later mosquitoes, were thick, it frequently rained, the ground was
muddy and often impassable and the opportunities for play were few and
far between. To a child, this is death; the ultimate in boredom. To me,
it was the same.
The
springtime was usually spent inside, whiling away my time at some tedious
task or game, waiting for the summer to finally roll around and dry the
boredom away. While I wasted my time under a dry roof, I would often watch
my grandmother through my bedroom window. She used to rise at 6 a.m. to
get a head start out in the garden, often to avoid the plagues of flies
that abounded in the marshy area around our home. I never understood why
she did what she did, what satisfaction she got from hilling those damn
vines, what pleasure she derived from sowing those microscopic seeds. Even
when they grew, she never stopped to appreciate them; she was always more
worried about which tree needed to be pruned rather than which flower had
finally blossomed. And I simply didn’t care. Her gardens were something
to avoid, part because of pure boredom with the plant kingdom, but mostly
because of the possibility of accidentally steeping on some “precious”
flower that she has pain-stakingly tried to grow and the punishment that
would ensue.
I was
14 when my grandfather passed away. It didn’t fully hit me at the time,
and maybe it hasn’t hit me up until this very day. I think my grandmother
saw it as a relief because he had suffered for more than a decade. She
cared for him and tended to his wounds as his health slowly deteriorated
to the point where he was barely able to walk. One August morning he had
a stroke and was in a coma for a week before he finally let go. I’m not
sure if it hit my grandmother at the time, she had to be a rock for all
of her grieving children. She pushed her pain away in order to consol her
shaken family and in the process denied herself the grieving process.
It was at that time that she became even more obsessed with her garden,
spending almost every waking moment amongst the flowers in order to come
as close as she could to achieving botanical perfection. She never got
there, but I think that was what she needed at the time- something to keep
working at to keep her mind off the pain. She continued to get up a 6 a.m.,
have a cup of tea, then venture out for another morning of battling the
mosquitoes.
I still
wasn’t interested in the gardens. I could care less which annuals were
in bloom, nor which tree was baring what fruit.
“Ah,
look at that, you’re finally coming out,” she said one morning to a bunch
of purple blossoms growing below my bedroom window.
Awaking
me from my sleep, I was not happy. Looking at the clock, I realized that
it was only 8 a.m., and I was not scheduled to rise for another 4 hours.
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to once again enter the
dream world.
“But
you, damn you, you’ve got nothing on you. If you don’t start growing, I’m
going to rip you out.”
She
always loved talking to her plants, praising them if they were growing
well, threatening to rip them out if they were laggard. I had always seen
her doing this, but chalking it up to a crazy old woman with nothing better
to do. But this time, for some reason, I wanted to know which plant she
was threatening. It didn’t really matter to me, but I just wanted to know.
I got
up out of bed, slipped on my shoes and headed out. There she was standing,
right below by bedroom window, harassing a twig that was sticking in the
ground.
“What
are you going on about?” I asked.
“It’s
this damn rose of Sharon. I planted it three years ago ad then it went
to work and died.”
“So?”
I replied sarcastically, “Go buy another one.”
“It’s
not the same thing,” she said disappointed as she walked away.
Normally,
seeing the opportunity to go back to sleep without her waking me with her
plant talk, I would have done just that. But this time, for whatever reason,
I followed her around to the front of the house. When I arrived, there
she was, ripping grass away from another bunch of flowers.
“I love
these peonies,” she noted, though I was unresponsive. “I tried to get them
to grow for years and years, and then they finally took off.”
The
flowers were large, in fact so large that their slender stalks could no
longer support their weight. Only an old string of panty hose tied to a
stake held them from toppling to the ground and breaking. Why would nature
create such a flower, one that couldn’t even support itself?
“You
see that though?” she asked as she pointed to the stalk. “The ants love
the flower too.”
Sure
enough, on closer inspection, ants were scurrying up and down the stalk,
making their home in the flower itself.
“But
that’s supposed to be good for it,” she explained. “They say that without
the ants, the flower wouldn’t bloom.”
I followed
her as she walked around the front porch and down the hummock, reaching
a row of spindly trees that separated our property from that of our neighbour,
my grandfather’s twin brother.
She
called them snowball trees, the real name I never bothered to find out.
Every year in July they were loaded with the white balls of flowers that
give them their name: snowballs. As a child, I always remember my grandfather
breaking up my days of fun by telling me to grab the hose and water them.
He used to get me to set the hose right at the base and let it run for
a half-hour or so, then repeat with the next tree. After three hours, they
were all watered, although the logic in doing so was always a mystery to
my grandmother.
“These
have been here for 20 years and look at them. They aren’t even as tall
as me,” she sighed, disappointed. “I think that when Douglas used to get
you to water them with that cold water on those hot days, it stunted their
growth. I wanted them to grow tall so Donald couldn’t see over here, but
I don’t think they’ll ever get that tall.”
She
led me around to the front of the garden where we had an overall view of
the entire lot. To be honest, you’d never know that she spent so much time
in the garden; things weren’t organized and “manicured,” many trees that
should have had blossoms didn’t, and some areas of the property looked
like they had reached the point of no return. Of all the attributes I could
bestow upon her, a green thumb was not one of them. She was not a champion
gardener who turned everything into gold that she touched, everything that
grew in her gardens did so through blood, sweat and tears, and sometimes
that didn‘t even work..
Case
in point was the almond tree that she planted in the back of her front
garden. She bought it new, cared for it as if it were a baby and watched
it bloom beautifully for three glorious years. Then, without a clear explanation,
it shrivelled up and died. She was clearly disappointed, when it was in
bloom it was beautiful. Now it’s merely a stump. She walked over to the
stump and gave it a kick, as if to spite herself for not having the ability
to get it to grow.
“I’m
going to have me another one of these,” she said spitefully. “And dammit,
it will grow this time.”
As if
to mock her, only four feet away grew a beautiful magnolia tree, already
taller than the person who planted it. She walked to the tree, stood there,
and then wiped her brow.
“I used
to remember seeing these around and almost crying,” she confessed. “I wanted
one so damn bad for so many years, but I couldn’t find them around.”
She
gently caressed one of the many extending branches and brushed one of the
flowers against her cheek.
“Then
Beverly came out one day with a little stick, said it was from a magnolia
tree. So I stuck it in, I never thought that it would grow.”
But
it did grow. Over seven short years, that foot long stick grew into a tree
8 feet tall and just as wide. Now, in late May, it was in full bloom, a
blanket of pink and white hues against a backdrop of a bleak world trying
to recapture the glory of the previous season. The sight of it was overwhelming.
Even a non-horticulturalist such as myself was left in awe at the sheer
beauty of the simple tree that grew despite all of the odds stacked against
it.
My grandmother
stepped back until the entire tree came into her view. She shook her head
and smiled, closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
“Can’t
you smell them?”
I closed
my eyes.
“I can.“
I reply as I breathe deeply. “The scent is magnificent.”
“I waited
my entire life for that and now I finally have it. I would not give this
tree away for all the money in the world.”
I finally
understood.
My grandmother
passed away just a few years after that morning and I haven’t been able
to go back to the house since. I have no idea what ever happened to the
peonies, the snowball trees nor if the rose of Sharon ever grew. But because
of that one morning, I now realize that my favourite season will always
be spring because I can still smell the scent of those magnificent magnolias
and see my grandmother standing beside the tree, admiring their fleeting
beauty.
ã 2004. Written at Bridgewater,
Nova Scotia, Monday June 15, 2004.
The Magnolias (& other stories of
life): The Magnolias