Garden of Earthly Delights

A View from Idyllwild

By Steven Leigh Morris

Apple Blossoms on Hemstreet, as Santa Ana breezes whisk through

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Two months later, snow and ice come crashing in, three feet over one weekend, twisting and splitting fenceposts. Trees decapitated. Roads closed. Power cut. Internet out. How can a fragile bulb survive that?

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So you want to create something of beauty, as though there’s no plague. Something to inspire. There are encrusted, dry tubers and bulbs in the basement from last year. It’s November. End of season in these SoCal mountains around Idyllwild. You imagine the possibilities.

Dirt under fingernails, soggy mulch. The bulbs go into tubs to protect them from rodents and reptiles. All the creatures of the forest, a few of them venomous, propelled by their needs and their hungers. You sprinkle dry leaves on top of the potting soil, to protect your project from the coming ice-storms. You cover the tubs with netting, to protect them from the squirrels and the rats that would eat them alive if they could.

Two months later, snow and ice come crashing in, three feet over one weekend, twisting and splitting fenceposts. Trees decapitated. Roads closed. Power cut. Internet out. How can a fragile bulb survive that?

Another two months later, after the thaw, only a few puddles remain of the paralyzing freeze. Suddenly, magically, leaves appear in those tubs, then flower buds: daffodils, narcissus, hyacinths, tulips, ranunculus. Not as lush as you imagined, nor as sparse as you feared. An apple tree blooms on Hemstreet. There are apple and pear seeds that have been in the refrigerator for months, in water, in a glass. Suddenly, new white string roots have wrapped themselves around the seeds. How do they know it’s spring? From inside the fridge? How do they know? Nature’s rhythmic constancy. How long can it last?

You hear a roar through the treetops: the dreaded Santa Ana winds. A siren screams from the highway below. Everybody who hears it thinks the same thing. It’s only April. There’s been no rain or snow since February. Will they be able to stop the next firestorm that comes racing over the southern ridge? Next year at this time, will there even be a village? A community? Will the locusts have decimated all the gardens? Will the next fire have turned the woods to ash, along with all the creatures of the forest?

Garden of Earthly Delights

You stop remembering the past. You stop imagining the future. You stop just to breathe. A pause. In that breath comes the perfume of the narcissus and hyacinths. Next week, it will be gone, that perfume, the season will pass, like a play.

And you say to yourself, I did what I could, and it was not sufficient, not what I imagined. And you breathe. And you breathe. Taking in the rich perfume. For as long as you’re able.