Transplants

In early October, I received a care package from three amazing Midwestern aunts. They were in the process of selling my grandmother’s house but were determined to keep the amazing peony garden the family had lovingly created and painstakingly tended for at least 45 years at one home and possibly another 60 years before that. (Family legend has it that the original peony bulbs came to America with my great-grandparents when they immigrated from Russia in 1907.)

So my aunts and their families dug up all the peony bulbs and distributed them to me, my siblings, and our cousins across the States and Canada (26 of us in all).

If you are a gardener, this might sound like a piece of cake, an easy and sentimental opportunity to add some color to your yard. But, unfortunately, I’m no gardener. I love flowers, but dirt, weeds, and worms are not for me. So you can imagine the pressure that came in that little brown box filled with bulbs to be lovingly planted and painstakingly tended, and of course photographed and shared family-wide.

To add to the pressure, my aunts also sent me my brother’s bulbs. He lives in San Diego, which is apparently the perfect climate for humans but not for peonies. So, I was to plant and nurture his flowers along with mine and then give the bulbs to him if he ever moves somewhere that suits them.

Along with the bulbs, which were each wrapped in tissue paper the color of their flower, there was a page of typewritten instructions that would intimidate Martha Stewart.

First we had to find a place to plant – per the instructions, “a sunny, well-drained location that can have some shade but at least a half-day of sunshine, that is not near large trees or shrubs where they would be robbed of light, moisture, and plant food.”

I found a place that met at least some of the criteria, and began to clear away the scrub that had overgrown the area, feeling a sense of accomplishment with each tug.

I noticed a vine had begun to grow upwards and tangle itself into a pine tree and gave a pull. It didn’t come down. I stepped away from the tree and looked up. Guess I misjudged a bit. Turns out the vine had grown a lot higher than I thought, and was actually peeking out of the top of the 100-foot pine tree. What’s more, it was holding several dead branches in place (probably since March’s big storm), making any further tugging potentially fatal. So, I declared my garden cleared.

Then my husband joined me for what I thought would be twenty minutes of bulb-planting, until we read the first direction: “For each plant dig a hole a minimum 18 inches deep and at least the same diameter. Depth of planting is very important,” the paper screamed at me. When he took the spade to our hard dusty rocky soil, I instantly knew that 18 inches was going to take a very long time.

We knew we needed a better tool, but we couldn’t find our pick axe. Which got me thinking, “How does one lose a pick axe, and should I be concerned?” He got down a few inches before declaring defeat. Unable to deal with an unfinished project, I stayed out for a short while longer but only managed to unearth a few more rocks. I convinced myself I made it six inches, but it was probably three. I figured at least I could use the rocks to make quite a nice border if the garden ever got planted.

So I went inside, and the bulbs sat on my porch for another six weeks. Each day I stepped past them, a reminder of my family duty unmet. I asked for help, but got only sympathy, no tools. Making it worse was the stream of emails from cousins and siblings with stories of their successful plantings. Soon I was having nightmares about giant peonies across America laughing at me.

Finally it dawned on me to call a friend who has everything, and yes, he had a pick axe, and a post-hole digger by the way. That night, my husband chopped up the soil (luckily not attracting too much attention wielding a pick axe in the dark – which again, creates a bit of uneasiness as to where ours might be), and the next day I had that twenty-minute bulb-planting experience. Well, actually thirty minutes if you include the time I spent replanting previously-planted bulbs that had been unearthed by a man wielding a pick axe in the dark.

Will they grow? It’s anyone’s guess. There are still a lot of care instructions to follow (or forget)before they reach their full potential. But for Thanksgiving this year I was just grateful I got those things in the ground before I had to face my family at the table!