Where Lilacs Still Bloom (23 page)

There were frustrations too. One spring I pulled up a dozen nearly-creamy-white lilacs that so disappointed. Maybe they were creamier than a few others, but the stems were weak and the fragrance paled and the blooms lasted about as long as my patience.

“Pull them up?” Frank had his elbows akimbo. “You sure?”

“
Ja
, I’m certain. Into that wheelbarrow they go.”

I hated discarding plants nearly two feet high, but they had to go. They simply weren’t moving toward the prime flower I desired.

Frank loaded them up and wheeled them just beyond the picket fence and left the wheelbarrow sitting there. He stepped into the barn and was gone for a time, while I mulched and wondered if the soil was the problem. In the distance I heard men working on the railroad that would border our four acres on the west. They built a dike nearly as high as the house and would lay the tracks along the top, hoping to foil the Columbia River when it flooded.

When Frank came out, he was carrying a sign. He held it up for me to read: Take a Lilac Home.

“Not that anyone will. They’re discards for goodness’ sake.”

“A Hulda Klager lilac discard is a treasure to the masses,” Frank quipped and stuck the sign in the wheelbarrow.

By nightfall, the lilacs had disappeared. I hadn’t even been aware that so many people walked or rode or drove by. Frank had put a box out there, and when he brought the wheelbarrow back, he had three dimes too.

“I didn’t get to see who took them, to ask them where they planned to plant them,” I complained.

“You’ll have more to rip up and give away.” Frank flipped the coins in his palm. “Maybe there is a future in your lilacs.”

His collecting the money bothered. I didn’t want to sell them. It didn’t seem right. “I prefer giving them away. But good ones, not discards. People should have the best to plant, and if it’s a gift, it’s even better.”

Edmond Wilke continued to be a part of our lives. Delia contracted with him to run the farm, and while the work to be done was on those acres where cows needed milking and hay needed cutting and storing for winter, Edmond appeared often at our doorstep. He took supper with us. Irvina charmed him, as she did everyone, and he’d chat with Delia and more than once even held the baby, the child treated like a porcelain vase in his big hands. I ached when I watched that scene, thinking it should have been Nell Irving holding his child or Fred holding his and Lizzie’s baby. As his brother had been, Edmond was tall, good-looking, with graceful fingers.
He always tapped the baby’s blanket at her heart whenever he handed the infant back to his mother or me. Then he and Frank would play a game of checkers together, while we women stitched or read and Delia went upstairs to nurse her child.

In the summer of 1907, after celebrating Irvina’s first birthday, I wrote to Luther Burbank to tell him of my success with having achieved a six-petal lilac and my Lavender Pearl. I told him I’d begun the registration process with the lilac society. I knew he wasn’t much interested in flowers, but I wanted him to know of the success and to thank him for his earlier encouragement. I also asked him about soil issues. The busy man wrote back, answered my questions, and added a note of congratulations on my “little flower experiment”:

My steady increase of cultivar varieties did put me on fire, and I did think it possible people might come and see what I’d planted, not just neighbors driving by on a Sunday. So I took another bold step and wrote another letter.

I read the letter to Frank. “Am I being too prideful, asking a writer to feature a story about the garden?”

Frank shrugged. “People enjoy a good story. And what better than about a German woman who taught herself how to make a better lilac?”

“I wouldn’t say better.” I thought of Barney Reed and wondered how many like him might read such an article and then come down hard on me. “Different. The flowers are just different.”

“I submit they are better. Better smells, better stems, better blooms. You’ve taken what was and using your God-given talents, you’ve made something better. No sin in that, Huldie. To deny what your talent allows, that would be the sin.”

“Oh, Frank. What would I do without you?”

“Just fine, Huldie. You’d do just fine. Now post the letter. Who knows, maybe we’ll get a few nickels from visitors coming our way after the article comes out.”

“I’ll keep giving the starts away, you know that, don’t you, Frank?” He nodded. I snuggled up next to him. “You think she’ll write it?”

“I submit she will. You’re giving her a chance to feature a unique story about a smart woman. Besides, who wouldn’t want the chance to leave California to come to Washington, if only for a day?” He grinned.

C
ornelia stepped off the train in Groton, Massachusetts, and found the air hot and humid, so unlike Sacramento this time of year. August could swelter in the Far West, that was certain, but there were always breezes from the Sacramento River, and never this sticky hot. Groton boasted rivers too. The entire town grew in a V between the Nashua and Squannacook, but the rivers didn’t cool the train station. Cornelia’s mother didn’t want her to head east. CK gave his blessings, though he cautioned that making a living writing as a freelancer was difficult for men and would be twice as hard for a woman, even a good writer like Cornelia.

She’d longed to travel, to taste the foods of other places and do more than answer questions with her written words. She’d arranged for a neighborhood woman to ensure that her mother was looked after, and then Cornelia bought her
ticket and accepted an invitation from Laura Louise Hetzer to write a story about the Lowthorpe School of Landscape Architecture for Women. Now, here she was. She turned to survey her surroundings, sat on a bench, and wrote while she waited.

Cornelia finished the haiku, changing the last line to begin with “Adventures,” then putting it back. This new form of poetry focused her mind and captured feelings quickly. She stuffed the paper in her bag. Laura told Cornelia if she was late to start walking toward the First Parish Church on Main and Lowell, seeking the tall white steeple “whose bell was cast by the Paul Revere Foundry” and wait for her there. The stretch of her legs felt good after the long trip, but she was tired and hoped Laura wouldn’t be too late. She hadn’t walked far when a horse cab driving toward her slowed and a woman stuck her head out to the side and waved.

“Laura? Miss Hetzer?”

“Yes, it’s me. I’m so sorry I’m late.”

The cab stopped, and Cornelia fanned her face with her hand. “You’re not dressed for our humidity.” Laura looked at her attire. “But we’ll soon take care of that. An embroidered
muslin will be cool and comfortable. You did bring an embroidered muslin?”

“Yes, and a soft mull too.”

“I told the director about the story you were writing for the
Sacramento Bee
, and she’s very excited.”

“Oh.” Cornelia listened as the cab continued down the street, the horse
clop-clopping
along. “I don’t know if the
Bee
will use it. I … left my job there. I’m going to be a freelancer, take my chances with selling stories to magazines and newspapers.” Laura frowned. “Not to worry. My editor said he’d look at what I’d write, so you haven’t misled your director. But it might appear in other journals or newspapers as well. I can sell it more than once in noncompeting markets. That’ll advance your school’s outreach even further.”

“Yes, of course, you’re right. We’ll explain that. Meanwhile, you’ll have the best time discovering our school and meeting the many students who come from long distances to take their training. I’m so pleased you’ve come.”

They shared more about each other than they had in the letters, including Cornelia telling Laura how her contact with Mrs. Klager had worked out. “She writes well and right back,” Cornelia said. “She even shared a bit about her lilac orchard and how one of her deep purple lilacs produced a bloom with six petals! Imagine that. She’s registered another cultivar with the horticultural society, and it’s been accepted. She calls it Lavender Pearl for the unique color.”

“Quite unusual. That sort of thing intrigues me. But I
think Mr. Child will find it of interest as well. He does the surveying and engineering, and of course anything new in the larger shrubs will intrigue him. I’ve arranged for interviews with him and Gertrude Sanderson, the instructor for Drawing and Garden Design.”

“And Mrs. Low?”

“Yes, of course. You must speak with our founder. But all of that is tomorrow. Today, we simply relax, and I’ll take you on a walk through the grounds and greenhouses. It’s quite impressive.”

And so it was. The cab took them on a winding road lined with sycamore trees and elm, with underbrush of flowering shrubs and woodsy plants unfamiliar to Cornelia. She pulled out her notebook to sketch, writing a name beside it that Laura gave her. When they approached the school, Cornelia’s jaw dropped. “It looks … palatial,” she said. “Massive.”

“Three stories, wraparound porch. Instructors sleep on the top floor where the dormers are. The students sleep there as well, and I rather like having camaraderie between student and instructor that isn’t delineated by class. We’re all lovers of plants and trees here. We can learn from each other; that’s the school’s philosophy. The plants teach different lessons to each of us. It would be tragic if I didn’t get the lesson because I thought my student offered less than what I had to give.”

“That’s very egalitarian.” Cornelia knew then the direction her article would take, about how plants and shrubs and natural things made equals of those who might otherwise
never cross paths. This would not be just an article about an interesting landscape school for women.

“Gardening is a very democratic activity,” she wrote in her journal that evening, “with no plant seen better than another, each having a place in the scheme of things and each generously allowing the other to shine at various times without the others becoming jealous.” She looked forward to proving the thesis in her article and wondered if CK would still be interested in such a common woman’s point of view.