Harbinger of spring. The crocuses of Abend Street.
Harbinger of spring. The crocuses of Abend Street.
Nikki’s crocuses
Before they were Nikki’s crocuses, they were simply the crocuses that come up first in the spring. The rambling century and a half old Victorian brick house that she and her husband are restoring has generations of life, love, joy and despair within its walls. Most of the landscaping planted decades ago when the house, now called the Keyway Terrace, was young are gone, but the crocuses remain.
I remember well the day the last giant tree of Abend Street surrendered to a summer Midwestern thunderstorm. It graced the southeast corner of the Keyway Terrace house’s lot long before the cobblestone streets were laid. Long before the house was built, likely long before the first Europeans came to the southwestern edge of Illinois, on the limestone bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River floodplain that would become East St. Louis.
The four-foot diameter oak fell to the forces of nature, blocking the street for hours until city crews could cut it up and haul it away. Because the first block of Abend Street sits on the highest point in Belleville, lightning strikes and summer storm winds prey on the trees as they age into towering maturity. With their slower growth, the oaks last longer than the maples, but they all fall victim to age and weather.
The maples, more quickly hitting fifty or sixty-foot height, draw the ire of the storm gods who hurl their lightning bolts and their wind gusts to split their soft wood into submission. Something there is in those maples that draws nature’s ire. They’re invaders really. It’s the oaks that belong here. The maples, like so many other things were brought here, intentionally or not, by the European settlers. Even though their seeds are a nuisance and the trunks too often split, I must admit I love the color of their flaming fall leaves.
Although the mighty oak and the less than mighty maples have fallen and will not spring back to life, there are other landscape additions brought by the Europeans that bring delight as the February and March sun lingers longer. Somehow each February the delicate looking crocuses brighten our mornings with their promise of coming spring.
For the nearly forty years we have lived on Abend Street, the small grouping of crocuses huddled in the ninety-degree angle of south and east facing brick walls of the Keyway Terrace has brought the good news of coming spring. Sheltered from the cruel west winds, warmed by the red brick walls retaining the sun’s beams, the green shoots pierce the leaf litter of winter’s debris.
We failed to notice the crocuses blooms that first spring on Abend Street. Faced with the imminent birth of younger son, Alex, we were too occupied with readying the house for his arrival to pay attention to spring’s harbinger. It was the second spring they became an annual marker in our lives.
The first several years of our marriage, before moving to Abend Street, Annette and I travelled near the end of winter to break the long winter’s stretch. We’d enjoyed the sun of the Cayman Islands, the beaches of the Bahamas. Not realizing the reason that we took winter vacations in sunny southern climes, I proposed that we take a February trip to cross-country ski in Vermont.
I’d fallen in love with cross-country skiing the previous winter while undergoing Army National Guard winter combat operations training in Minnesota. Annette brought a pair of cross-country skis into the marriage. She had learned to cross-country ski years earlier in Michigan. So, it seemed only natural that we bundle our skis up into LL Bean bags to schlep them onto the TWA flight to Burlington, Vermont.
As for eleven -month-old Alex, he would stay behind with his babysitter taking care of him during the day and his grandmother, Mimi, spending the nights in our house.
After loading the car for the drive over the Mississippi River, to St. Louis’ international airport, Annette spotted the crocuses waving to her from the Keyway Terrace yard. We walked over to inspect the seemingly fragile blooms.
In spite of their delicate appearance, the crocuses had to be incredibly hardy. The Keyhole House, as we called it then, for its arched brick entryway, that resembled nothing so much as an old door lock’s keyhole, had been divided into eight or ten-apartments decades before. Neither the tenants nor the landlord showed any interest in caring for the crocuses. They received no fertilizer, no watering, no raking of winter’s detritus, yet somehow, they pushed through the earth to greet the sun.
Halfway to the airport, Annette began crying at the thought of leaving infant Alex for a week a half a continent away. I stopped, pulled over to turn around but through her tears she agreed to continue with the trip. Long before mobile phones and video conferences she would have to content herself with the occasional long-distance phone call to assure herself that baby Alex was okay.
As we landed at the tiny Burlington, Vermont, airport, the stewardess announced we should bundle up as the windchill, with Canadian winds hurtling down, brought the windchill to twenty below zero. Annette’s glance at me clearly not happy. We picked up our luggage and staggered into the wind to find our rental car amidst the piles of plowed snow. An hour later, arriving at our winter playground lodge, we were greeted by snowdrifts nearing the second story windows.
The timed thermostat in our room turned the heat off after twenty minutes. Just long enough to change from clothes to nightwear and dive under the comforters!
The next morning a bright sun, cloudless skies and six degrees greeted us. Annette greeted the wool-clad breakfast waitress with: “It’s a shame we won’t be able to go skiing since it’s so cold today.”
With a quizzical look, the young woman replied, “The temperature is perfect for skiing. If it were any warmer the snow would melt to your skis and ice them up.” Chastened by that news, we watched out the frost-edged windows as a senior citizens group gracefully glided across the glistening snow.
As we returned to our chilly room to change in to long underwear and parkas, Annette said: “I left Alex and crocuses for twenty below and six feet of snow!”
We’ve not been back to Vermont since, but each spring as we inspect the neighbors’ crocuses, Annette reminds me of leaving Abend Street crocuses and Alex for twenty below and snowdrifts to the eaves.
Next-door neighbor, Nikki, grooms the crocuses now. They’re no longer neglected and they may be her crocuses, but they’ll always be our first glimpse of spring.
© William L. Enyart 2021
Email: bill@billenyart.com