Where Lilacs Still Bloom by Jane Kirkpatrick Page B

for. “Seems to me as soon as you ask for patience, you get something coming down the pike that requires an extra dose of it.”
    “I figured I was safe. After all, I’ve already had the misery that spurred the request.”
    “Maybe. But misery loves its company, and I don’t want it settling in with you. I want that special place next to you, not a plant or two.”
    The next morning we walked home from church withour children in front of us, the girls squired by their young men. Those children were my petals, every one of them. I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath, sliding my arm through Frank’s.
    “Let’s get a better look at how the rest of the yard fared,” Frank said when we arrived home. The girls rustled up dinner, and we could hear their chatter with their beaus through the open windows as Frank and Fritz and I walked the paths.
    Irises had been clipped by the shod hooves. They’d missed the peonies, though they were already beginning to splay out. A few daylilies looked as though a fat cat had squatted in their midst. Horses hadn’t had time to rip off an oriental poppy as they fled through the yard. Most of those blooms had already faded, but they still lent a color point for the eye. I spied the break in the neighbor’s fence on the other side where they’d trashed through. A flash of words spewed from my mouth, and Frank cautioned me. “Now, now,” he said.
    “I’d like to say those things to my neighbor.” But I wouldn’t. Not until I’d had time to think it through. Instead, I told Frank, “As soon as we can afford it, let’s think about one of those automobiles where the horsepower is contained inside metal. And offer the neighbor a ride now and then so he might be inspired to rid himself of those horses.”
    Frank grinned. “Who would have thought that horses trampling lilacs would lead to such a windfall for me!” Then he looked contrite and added, “Course it’s a terrible thing theydid to your lemons, Huldie. But you’ll make lemonade of it, after all, I submit. Yes, indeed, that’s what I submit.”

    We could not have asked for a more glorious wedding day, even if the gardens could have been in a little better form. I’d tried to save seeds from the two equine-destroyed lilacs, but to no avail. I would have to focus on the three remaining. But that would be later, after the wedding, after things had settled down in my daughters’ lives, and I could concentrate on the lilacs.
    On my daughters’ wedding day, the sun shone bright and birds twittered in the magnolia and the holly trees. The flatiron garden plot was awash with blooms of many colors. Pansies and petunias bobbed their heads. Marigolds trotted around the perimeter of that iron-shaped planting. Lavender lent its sweet smell and promise of abundance to the occasion. I would carry a nosegay of lavender, and we handed out small bouquets to women as they arrived for the ceremony, at least those who didn’t have a flower already on their person.
    I looked out at the gardens the morning of the ceremony while ironing the girls’ dresses. Delia’s dress was satin, and it showed the wrinkles more than the linen that draped Lizzie’s slender frame. Both girls had cape bodices and ragamuffin sleeves, though Lizzie’s sleeves were lace and Delia’s all satin.
    I finished ironing and hung the girls’ dresses from the toprailing of the stairwell, so their long gowns fell as though a waterfall. Martha and I worked in the sunroom with the lavender, and she reminded me as we created our bouquets that supposedly lavender represented a “woman in her prime, someone devoted.”
    “Really? I guess I knew that flowers had certain meanings, just not what they are.”
    “Violets are what Jupiter tossed into the fields for his beloved Io to graze upon after he turned her into a cow.”
    “A cow,” I said. “Not a horse?” I shook my head, remembering those lost lilacs. “What are they teaching you at the normal