Out of dark November
It seems as if the planting crew were all just here, leaning over the raised rows, working steadily in the quiet fall sunlight to get the peonies in. I had thought I could do it myself; there wasn’t that much left to plant—just 400 peony-flowering tulips and 100 new peony tubers.
I could have done it in three days, maybe, but there was a fair amount of preparation required: laying down landscape fabric, cutting holes for all the peonies with the propane torch Bob made, adding compost to each hole, digging a trench for the tulips. And I was out of steam. I was dimly aware that I would lose my father, that his surgery had been too much for him, that after his terrible reaction, four days after they opened his chest and sewed him back up, he would not wake up and I would not see again that spirit I had always known, the energetic safety net, the hard charger. Dad always had a project, was always worrying about something, couldn’t stop moving, never really grew old.
He had done the drawings for this house and had done so much work on it himself: built the deck railings and the side steps and landings, painted all the rooms, put up shelves in the closets. He had come over five days a week that summer, along with all the others, all in their thirties and forties and fifties, Byron and Michael and Jason and Bridger and Richard and Jeremy. He always took a break to go into town and sit down for lunch, pacing himself, and he always took at least one of us with him. He was in his element, coming over in his little hobby truck. The winter before that he had gone to the quarry to pick out stone for the caps of the brick porch piers, and he had built the forms for the concrete supports that run six feet below ground and hold the piers. I took a short video of him cutting off the forms with a reciprocating saw and bemoaning the slight bulge in one of the supports.
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The shipment of tulips and peonies was iffy, and it looked as if they wouldn’t come, and I had no report, so I called Ednie Bulb, and Dave Dowling himself answered the phone and checked my order and told me the shipments from Holland had been thousands of bulbs short—just another fall-through ripple effect of the pandemic. I had really wanted the tulips, all early varieties that would give me focal flowers in April. And the peonies: another 25 ‘Coral Charm,’ along with expensive ‘Etched Salmon’ and perfect light pink ‘James Pillow’ and classic ‘Sarah Berhardt’ (why have I waited years for this variety?). But with Dad’s light fading, and our family’s realization that his organs were all failing, my own energy was dribbling out, and I quietly hoped my order wouldn’t come.
One box arrived with two varieties. Natalie had asked if I didn’t want the crew that had helped me get the hardy annuals in six weeks before to come and take care of this planting. Over a couple of half-days, they got everything done, Natalie and Amy and Kelsey and Felix, all in their twenties and working for just $15 an hour and the love of the task over a desk job and for one another’s company and because they thought it was important, what I was doing with flowers. And they knew I needed the help. The second afternoon, while they were working, two more boxes arrived with the rest of the peonies, and everyone could stay on and get them right in.
None of them had planted peonies before (three of them work with vegetable growers), so I showed them how to dig a hole for the unwieldy tubers, each variety a distinct shape, and how to support the tubers from below with a tamped-down mound of earth and compost, and how to set the tuber’s crown 2 inches below the soil surface. They worked carefully but steadily, taking different tasks and working as a team, and I ended up only facilitating their work and finally just down sat on a cinder block and talked with them, unmotivated to pick up a shovel.
Every night I was on standby for a solo visit to the hospital, 40 minutes away, and over those two weeks I got in five times. The last night I got in for 20 minutes, and I held Dad’s hand and talked fast into his ear, telling him the day had been beautiful and I had just been walking with Erin at the lake, that the election had been called for Biden, that I had had help to get all the flowers in, gotten it all done right, and they would be beautiful in spring.
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Now the tulips are all up and the ‘Coral Charm’ are up and the rest are just showing through the extra heap of compost I gave them later, in anticipation of a cold winter, and the hellebores, steady through all this, are blooming.
A month ago, in a side closet, I found a duffel bag, packed in early November, ready to grab if I was called to leave quickly. In it were several extra pairs of underwear and socks, a fresh camisole, a fresh T-shirt, a sweater, slippers, and the toiletries bag (like the one Dad had when we were kids) with only the things I couldn’t borrow from family members in Kansas City.
In the old shed, Dad’s little truck is parked with a new personalized license plate, LOVUDAD. Going through the truck, I found that he left me a good set of jumper cables, an ice scraper, a little first-aid kit and a wrapped peppermint, which I am saving for later.