Emigrating with Dreams and Bulbs

When Susanne meets a barn quilt painting workshop participant whose father hybridized Amaryllis in Holland over 75 years ago, she embarks on a discovery of the flower that leads her to her own back yard. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Happy to Be Canadian podcast. I'm Suzanne Spence Wilkins, a writer who lives in rural southwestern Ontario, Canada. Each week I share an original, very short story that will have you laughing and reflecting on the simple moments of our lives. Now, on to today's episode. Happy to be Canadian, episode 51. Anne came to a barn quilt painting workshop last Saturday. This is the second event she has attended. The first one was over 18 months ago. During that event, Anne told me about her father. In post-World War II Holland, he worked for a horticulture business hybridizing amaryllis. While some of his work was in the greenhouse, he also traveled across Europe, peddling these special bulbs to other growers. I try to imagine him bringing beauty to places that had been racked by bombs and artillery only a few years before. While the landscape was marred by the conflict, in a backhanded way, transportation might have been improved by major armies needing sturdy roads to move forward. Like many other Europeans, he emigrated to Canada with his wife and a brood of children. He built his own greenhouse and continued his work with Amaryllis. After Anne had attended the first workshop and told me her story, I created an Amaryllis barn quilt pattern. Anne saw it and promised to return to paint it. When she came last week, Anne brought a picture of her father to show me. It was rolled like a tube and girdled with an elastic. As I unrolled it, the thin photographic paper crinkled. Like magic, a middle aged man appeared in the center of the picture. His thick black hair was trimmed and parted to comb it to the right. He wore a short sleeve dress shirt that would be cool to wear in the hot greenhouse and looked like a tie could be attached if a business meeting was required. He might have been taller than he looked in the picture. From his chest up he was visible between the greenhouse metal tables filled with blooming amaryllis. The flower pots were packed tight together to get maximum water, fertilizer, and light for optimum growth for these tropical plants. The stalks had shot up to display blocks of white, red, and pink blooms. He looked at ease in his workplace. He was an amaryllis grower. Amaryllis were named after the mythical fairy who stabbed herself in the heart with an arrow every night for thirty nights, hoping that a certain shepherd would fall in love with her. I don't think it turned out well for the fairy. Those stories seldom do, but it provided an inspirational name for this magnificent bloomer. The Amaryllis followed a similar route to popularity as many flowers have done. It was found by the plant hunters of the 16th and 17th centuries, and its bulbs were returned to the home empire for breeding and mass circulation. It was a popular site in ornamental glass houses and offered a glimpse of wealth and class in homes of the rich. While its blooms are magnificent, it's their arrival in the cold weather months that adds to its appeal. Today, we can find boxes of single amaryllis bulbs at our local hardware stores in the fall. The company that Anne's father worked for in Holland is still a major distributor. The Amaryllis package is about eight inches square, just big enough to protect the plastic pot, bag of soil mix, and the double fist sized bulb, and small enough to be packed and shipped across the ocean. Years ago, I would buy one for my grandma Spence at Christmas. This was when her holidays had been reduced to being invited for a couple of meals at her children's houses. No tree, no piles of presents, no turkey roasting in her kitchen. It might have also been after she stopped giving all her grandchildren a pair of socks with five dollars taped to them. At home, after the celebrations, she would unpack the bulb, settle it about halfway down in the pot of soil mix, and water it. She would place it on the east-facing window ledge that was tucked between the dining room table and the desk. The tall and slender four-pane window was part of the house's original brick structure. It was protected from the north winds by the kitchen, and the newer aluminum storms had been screwed to the outside frame to provide insulation. It was her sunniest window, the others all shaded by the veranda or big maple trees. Like most places in her big square brick farmhouse, this corner was quiet, and the amaryllis would be undisturbed as it set down roots. Soon the bright green tongue-like shoots of the leaves would stick out the top of the bulb that was exposed to the air. A thick flower stalk would follow. It would grow straight up, leaning towards the sun. My grandma would turn the pot to straighten the stalk and water the bulb. That was all that the Amaryllis required. When it rewarded her with three or four blooms splayed out like a compass rose at the top of the stalk, she would move the pot to the center of the dining room table where only the occasional guest sat. A couple of years ago, I was at the hardware store buying paint for a barn quilt workshop and bought an amaryllis on impulse. You know how they have them in a huge stack on your way to the checkout. It was a red one and bloomed to magnificence in my east facing window. It's my only one, not covered by a veranda. After the flowers fell, I watered it for a while, and then, without research, I tried to keep the bulb for the next year. I let the pot dry out on the counter. Then I took the bulb out of the pot. It was hard and a little withered. I was doubtful, but hopeful. I put the bulb in the far corner of our basement cold room, and there it has remained through at least two winters. When I go into the cold room to get potatoes, I look at that bulb from afar. It looks like it has eaten itself. All the meatiness of the bulb appears to have disappeared. Only the paper shell is left. I know, well, I presume, if I pick it up, it will crunch into small pieces like cracker debris on a placemat. So instead, I'm going to wait until fall to buy a boxed-up bulb at the hardware store and wonder if it is a variety that Anne's father hybridized in Holland 75 years ago. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Happy to Be Canadian. If you would like to receive an email each Saturday morning that features new short stories and more, you can sign up on my website www.crazyebarn.com. If you would like to meet me in person and discover another way that we tell our rural stories, please join me at a Barn Quilt Painting Workshop at our beautiful eight-sided barn in Palmyra, Ontario, along the North Shore of Lake Erie. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Crazy8 Barn. If you are an Apple podcast listener and enjoyed this podcast, I would appreciate it if you could leave me a favorable review. And that lets Apple know that Happy to Be Canadian is a valuable podcast and it shares it with other potential listeners. I'm Suzanne Spence Wilkins, and I'm happy to be Canadian.