The Magnolias (standard:non fiction, 1898 words)
Author: Db	Added: Jun 23 2004	Views/Reads: 3274/2248	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
My favorite season will always be the springtime, and this story, which tells of an early morning walk through the garden with my grandmother as well as an encounter with the magnolia tree, explains why.

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

“What are you going on about?” I asked. 

“It's this damn rose of Sharon. I planted it three years ago and then it
went to work and died.” 

“So?” I replied sarcastically, “Go buy another one.” 

“It's not the same thing,” she said disappointed as she walked away. 

Normally, seeing the opportunity to go back to sleep without her waking
me with her plant talk, I would have done just that. But this time, for 
whatever reason, I followed her around to the front of the house. When 
I arrived, there she was, ripping grass away from another bunch of 
flowers. 

“I love these peonies,” she noted, although I was unresponsive. “I tried
to get them to grow for years and years, and then they finally took 
off.” 

The flowers were large, in fact so large that their slender stalks could
no longer support their weight. Only an old string of panty hose tied 
to a stake held them from toppling to the ground and breaking. Why 
would nature create such a flower, one that couldn't even support 
itself? 

“You see that though?” she asked as she pointed to the stalk. “The ants
love the flower too.” 

Sure enough, on closer inspection, ants were scurrying up and down the
stalk, making their home in the flower itself. 

“But that's supposed to be good for it,” she explained. “They say that
without the ants, the flower wouldn't bloom.” 

I followed her as she walked around the front porch and down the
hummock, reaching a row of spindly trees that separated our property 
from that of our neighbour, my grandfather's twin brother. 

She called them snowball trees, the real name I never bothered to find
out. Every year in July they were loaded with the white balls of 
flowers resembling snowballs, giving them their name. As a child, I 
always remember my grandfather breaking up my days of fun by telling me 
to grab the hose and water them. He used to get me to set the hose 
right at the base and let it run for a half-hour or so, then repeat 
with the next tree. After three hours, they were all watered, although 
the logic in doing so was always a mystery to my grandmother. 

“These have been here for 20 years and look at them. They aren't even as
tall as me,” she sighed, disappointed. “I think that when Douglas used 
to get you to water them with that cold water on those hot days, it 
stunted their growth. I wanted them to grow tall so Donald couldn't see 
over here, but I don't think they'll ever get that tall.” 

She led me around to the front of the garden where we had an overall
view of the entire lot. To be honest, you'd never know that she spent 
so much time in the garden; things weren't organized and “manicured,” 
many trees that should have had blossoms didn't, and some areas of the 
property looked like they had reached the point of no return. Of all 
the attributes I could bestow upon her, a green thumb was not one of 
them. She was not a champion gardener who turned everything she touched 
into gold; everything that grew in her gardens did so through blood, 
sweat and tears, and sometimes that didn‘t even work.. 

Case in point was the almond tree that she planted in the background of
her front garden. She bought it new, cared for it as if it were a baby 
and watched it bloom beautifully for three glorious years. Then, 
without a clear explanation, it shrivelled up and died. She was clearly 
disappointed; when it was in bloom it was beautiful. Now it's merely a 
stump. She walked over to the stump and gave it a kick, as if to spite 
herself for not having the ability to get it to grow. 

“I'm going to have me another one of these,” she said spitefully. “And
dammit, it will grow this time.” 

As if to mock her, only four feet away grew a beautiful magnolia tree,
already taller than the person who planted it. She walked to the tree, 
stood there, and then wiped her brow. 

“I used to remember seeing these around and almost crying,” she
confessed. “I wanted one so damn bad for so many years, but I couldn't 
find them around.” 

She gently caressed one of the many extending branches and brushed one
of the flowers against her cheek. 

“Then Beverly came out one day with a little stick, said it was from a
magnolia tree. So I stuck it in, I never thought that it would grow.” 

But it did grow. Over seven short years, that foot long stick grew into
a tree 8 feet tall and just as wide. Now, in late May, it was in full 
bloom, a blanket of pink and white hues against a backdrop of a bleak 
world trying to recapture the glory of the previous season. The sight 
of it was overwhelming. Even a non-horticulturalist such as myself was 
left in awe at the sheer beauty of the simple tree that grew despite 
all of the odds stacked against it. 

My grandmother stepped back until the entire tree came into her view.
She shook her head and smiled, closed her eyes and took a deep breath. 

“Can't you smell them?” 

I closed my eyes. 

“I can.“ I reply as I breathe deeply. “The scent is magnificent.” 

“I waited my entire life for that and now I finally have it. I would not
give this tree away for all the money in the world.” 

As I stood there, the scent of the magnolias filling my entire being, it
hit me. I finally understood why she spent so much time in the garden, 
why she fussed so much over those tiny seeds and painstakingly hilled 
those spindly vines. For her, the scent of magnolias on a late spring 
morning was something that nobody, not even the richest person in the 
world, could take away from her. 

My grandmother passed away just a few years after that morning and I
haven't been able to go back since, the house permanently haunted with 
memories that I cannot bring myself to remember. I have no idea what 
ever happened to the peonies, the snowball trees nor if the rose of 
Sharon ever grew. But because of that one morning, I now realize that 
my favourite season will always be spring because I can still smell the 
scent of those magnificent magnolias and see my grandmother standing 
beside the tree, admiring their fleeting beauty.


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