I am writing 100 How-To essays. It is a big project. Here is why I am doing it. This is essay 48 of 100.
Remember that part in Gilmore Girls where Rory’s been away at college so Babette’s given Lorelei some flower bulbs so that she’ll have something to care for while Rory’s away? If you don’t remember that, slash have still not watched Gilmore Girls for some reason, the bulbs are disgusting and the Girls are frightened by them and the bulbs are abandoned.
(As a TOTAL aside, the person who did the legal read [!!!!!] for my upcoming audio project mentioned that he noticed that I referenced Gilmore Girls in the text, and he told me a few things about why he hated the show more than he could even really describe — namely that this is such a fake fantasy of what it is to be an independent woman, and nothing about it is remotely real, and small towns!? and friendship between mother and daughter!?!? and only white people?!?! [he has a point on that last one there]. And then he was all, “So do YOU like Gilmore Girls?” And it felt like it was absolutely in my best interest not to answer that question at all, so I did not.)
This scene from Gilmore Girls composed my sole understanding of what bulbs were until very recently. I mean, my mom definitely probably planted them. But she didn’t include me in the planting of them, and that was smart, because I would have done a bad job. Bulbs are for grown-ups, for the most part.
But then some were on sale at Costco last late fall, and I have to be honest with you: I was feeling some real depression about the onslaught of cold weather that was imminent. Spring and summer had been lightning fast, and the leaves changing colors was doing nothing for me. The people I lived with went, “Ooooh, feel that glorious cold snap! Why, soon we’ll have apple spiced things and soon we’ll be baking bread!” And I meanwhile wept alone in my room. The other thing I did was buy the bulbs from Costco.
They sat in the front from for a long time. When you plant bulbs in fall, you aren’t going to see them for months: they sleep in the ground until it’s spring, and you will probably forget them before that. This is not the only kind of bulb that there is, mind you. I have bought early spring bulbs that I think are supposed to come up this summer, but my only complete experience as of this writing is about these winter bulbs.
In September, Luke and I were celebrating our anniversary and the weather was bad bad bad. Every day that week was this gray nonsense: nothing bright or sunny or crisp about it. The weather was the atmospheric equivalent of eating wet cardboard. I was bummed out.
And I thought, “Hey! We should plant those bulbs from Costco!”
So to Luke I said, “Hey! We should plant those bulbs from Costco.”
“What bulbs from Costco?” Said Luke. Fair question, I guess.
Luke will pretty much say yes to every terrible thing you invite him to do, except for go to church. Is your friend in an arctic-noise-post-grunge garage band and are they playing a show at 2 a.m. in the basement of a warehouse? Luke will go with you to that. Need a ride to the next state over to help your brother-in-law move a heavy ottoman on a Saturday? Luke will even bring his own car. Luke hates Costco but has gone with me to Costco 100 percent of the times I’ve invited him, and was present when I bought the bulbs, but could be forgiven for forgetting them, as he was likely actively blocking the memory of bulk food shopping from imprinting itself on his brain. (For whatever reason, the five times I have asked Luke to attend a regular Sunday morning Unitarian [read: Gentle! Agnostic!] service with me he has said no thank you. But he went to the midnight Christmas mass that one time so it’s not even a hard and fast rule.)
Case in point: on a day of crummy, read-a-book-please weather, I asked my sweet husband to get elbow deep in cold mud, and he said sure ok. We bought this old house on a corner, which seemed like a boon until we realized how much side-lawn upkeep that meant, and how quickly the novelty of a mechanical push lawnmower fades. (Lest you think this is only a problem in summer: it also means an epic workout every time you go to shovel the snow.) We both thought it might be a good idea to plant the bulbs in the grassy side areas that attract snakes because we really suck at mowing them. This wasn’t really any fun and didn’t feel very good. By the end, I was carelessly throwing two or three bulbs in one hole so the job would just get done already.
Then we went inside and probably had rice (this is merely a fair guess and not a real memory) and forgot about the bulbs.
Mostly. All winter, on certain terrible days, I wondered about them. How could they tolerate being underground during this weather? It seemed that no ideas life could possible survive in the cold ground for such a long time. Were bulbs an elaborate trick? Also, god, winter was long; and lord, it truly seemed unlikely that anything green would ever spring forth ever again.
Here’s what happened in March, and there is no way for this not to be trite and a cliche. I wish that there was: I wish that I could reveal something new to you about things growing, but: with the first signs of birds and flowers, the bulbs shouldered their way up and out. I had no memory of what we’d planted (the container had said, “assortment,” and I paid little attention beyond that) but I remembered generally where we’d put them, and the payoff was immense.
Daffodils! Different types of daffodils! Tulips! Other kinds of tulips! White bell flower things! Some crazy firework of a flower with lilies that sprouted in handfuls from a single head like a lily Cerberus! Up they came, and they were incredible, and then they died, because flowers do.
I like that about flowers, though: that they die. You only get them for, like, two weeks before the flower part fades and withers and pretty soon you forget what flower was there in the first place. If you don’t get out and actively appreciate them while they are there, you’ll miss the whole experience. This is a gift of presence.
Luke said something interesting this year, after I’d put in a boatload of bulbs-you-plant-in-spring (dahlias, gladiolas, stuff like that). He’d purchased a shrub that sprouted white flowers, but no blueberries or luffas or avocados or anything useful. It was about how when you are young and you are just beginning to garden, you believe you will only ever plant things to eat. Why would anyone plant anything else? If you’re going to do a flower at LEAST let it be lavender, so some hip woman with a linen apron can encourage you to bake cookies with it.
But then, in the second or third or fourth year that you have a garden, you begin to notice other peoples’ ornamental trees. Or their outspoken tulip arrangements. Or their perennial violets. And you’re like, “Maybe I wouldn’t hate having a few more flower things in my yard.” So you buy some echinacea or some nasturtiums. And the next year, perhaps it’s pansies. Before you know it, there you are, investing in bulbs. Bulbs that serve no purpose at all except to make you happy for one to two weeks in the sunny months.
And you learn the secret joy about bulbs, which is this: bulbs are pretty easy. You can just kind of put them in the ground and forget about them. Kale is fickle and requires a lot of pruning and easing into soil and whatnot. Bulbs are fighters. They remember to come up and bloom and all you have to do is bury one, somewhere, at the time that is designated by the map on the back of the bulb package you bought from a hardware store.
Like candles or macarons or bunches of cinnamon sticks from the front of Trader Joe’s in November, bulbs become simple pleasures, and that is, generally, worthwhile. Maybe you don’t realize this until you are older. Next year I want a metric ton of peonies.