When as a young woman I lived abroad, in both Lebanon and Thailand, there were flowers everywhere. Masses of red and purple bougainvillea tumbling over walls, pink and lavender hibiscus bushes decorating doorways, flame trees, their scarlet blossoms silhouetted against monsoon clouds. I missed that perfusion of colors and scents when I moved to New York City. Green plants didn’t satisfy me. I wanted blossoms, especially during the long winter months. I began to buy one or two narcissus bulbs and try to time the planting so they’d blossom during January.
When those long dark days drag on I’ve found the best antidote is to watch the drama of a paper-white bulb being transformed into a slim green stem topped by a fragile whiter-than-white blossom.
During my child-raising years in Manhattan, flower shops sold narcissus bulbs. A store at the corner of my street showcased them in a woven basket at the entrance. When my sons were in school I’d stop there, stoop down, taking my time sorting through the container, looking for small bulbs with only a bit of brown stem showing.
I’d place the bulbs in glass vases and use them—as I’m sure many other city parents did --as a months’-long botanical lesson. One day I held the clear container up so that my younger son, Steve, could see the amazing tangle of roots around the river stones that I’d planted the bulbs in.
“The minerals in the stones substitute for minerals in the soil,” I explained. “See how the roots wind round the stones. Don’t they look like white and green snakes?”
“Yeah,” he said.
I‘d wondered at the time about his nonchalant reply because Steve was in the “Why?” phase, when an answer always elicited another “Why?” in a seemingly endless stream.
At bedtime, he fessed up. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I pulled your plant up so I could see everything better. But I stuffed it back in,” he assured me. Puzzle solved. I’d been surprised that morning when I’d found it leaning precipitously to one side! As the stalks grew I used chop sticks, tying stem and stick together with twist ties to hold the stalks upright.
As the years unfolded, so did my search for narcissus bulbs. There was a wonderful nursery near our country house in upstate New York that was famous for the fine quality and overwhelming variety of bulbs. A sign near the door proclaimed: “We sell only the best!”
Baskets and mesh bags of tubers and bulbs-- tulips, daffodils, dahlias, amaryllis, and many other kinds--were lined up on benches outside and on tables inside. I was surprised to find garlic tubers next to the gladiolus, alphabetically, if not aesthetically, correct.
People would travel hundreds of miles and spend hours deliberating or arguing about which and how many to buy. Because the bulbs need time to settle in before the ground freezes, the bulb-buying frenzy began in mid-August. On weekends the store would often run out of baskets and customers would grab one of the bright red children’s wagons the place provided. Another sign ordered: “Return baskets and wagons to place of origin!” The first time I read the sign I wondered, “And just where would that be? China, perhaps?”
Sometimes a toddler rode merrily along in a red wagon until she was pulled off by a parent to make room for another bag of bulbs. Children’s desires were secondary those days; the quest was on for just-the-right bulbs.
If you got carried away and bought scores of them, the woman at the cash register would eye the loot, and with a quick mental estimate, pronounce, “Those’ll cost you slightly north of $300.00,” while moving her head down to a small upright folder that warned with a sad face: “No returns!”
More than once I watched as a customer reluctantly chose several and placed them in the “Return to Shelf” box. This very real “sign language” was necessary because the staff didn’t have time to answer questions. From the time you entered the store until the door slammed shut behind you they used body language, a nod—up or down—pointing with a finger or a shoulder, or a sway of the torso depending on which body part was free to help guide you through the process. There were two women behind the counter. One tallied the take, the other took your money. A tiny sign said: “We prefer credit cards.” The woman didn’t have time to count out change.
There was no air conditioning and the store would become terribly hot. As the lines grew, generally pleasant customers would sometimes become irritable. When one afternoon everything came to a halt, a man grumbled, “Well! Where’s the cashier?” The second clerk snapped back, “She had to take a break. She’s a human after all. Unlike you!” Those were the only cross words I ever heard in that wonderful place.
The first Christmas we would be celebrating in our new country house I was especially eager to have the plants bloom precisely the week of the guests’ arrival. I wanted to brighten the rooms that were not fully furnished, and hoped the fragrance of the blossoms might mask the strong smells of new paint.
In late November I planted them in soil, river stones providing for drainage below, in large blue ceramic pots. The refrigerator had not been installed so I found a place near the outside wall in the basement, hoping the cool temperature would help delay their growth and blossoming. I’d read that placing paper bags over the tops of newly sprouted plants could further retard their growth. At the supermarket I requested paper bags and tied them over the plants before we left for the city.
The day we returned was rushed and I had no time to check on my plants. When my elder son, Peter, pulled up to the house and asked how he could help, I told him to go down to the basement, describing the room, and bring the narcissus plants up. He came back empty handed.
“ I didn’t see any plants down there. What do they look like?”
“Oh, I said, “I forgot to tell you. They have brown bags over them,” and I explained why.
He tilted his head, his lips turned up at the corners, and asked, “Is that what you did with Steve and me when we were little kids?”
When he brought them up, together we ceremoniously removed the bags. Long pale green, spindly stems that had been held vertical by the bags fell over hitting the floor with a squishing sound. Chopsticks would be of no help. We placed them in corners of the rooms in an attempt to hold them off the floor. Each day we’d check for blossoms. There never were any. Lesson learned: Torturing plants by depriving them of light doesn’t work.
This year my list of Christmas gifts had been short: two books and a paper-white bulb. Mail was delayed by weeks this holiday season. It was January before the last of my gifts arrived. It was from Peter, his fiancée, and my grandson, Theo.
A small glass container was packed so tightly in a double-weight box that it took my friend Diana and me ten minutes and two broken fingernails to get it out. Stuffed into the round vase was a mesh bag of dirt. No sign of a bulb. Directions called for adding water to the bag and squeezing to mix the “non-dirt vegetarian soil” with it.
“I think this is going to be messy,” I said. “Best done over the kitchen sink.” As I carried the bag we heard a large thump and the bulb went rolling across the floor. It’d been pushed up so hard under the dirt that it hadn’t been visible.
“I think we should put aprons on,” I said. We are of two different schools, pro-apron, anti-apron. Diana never wears one, proving she’s right by never getting a stain on her clothes whether cooking or eating, whereas even when I’m most careful I always smudge my clothes.
Although the triple-strength plastic zip lock bag was meant to pull apart easily, the top band was so tiny that neither of us could get a fingerhold. We tried to slide a paring knife between the sides, resorting to increasingly stronger and more pointed knives. At last, we succeeded. Now we were instructed to puncture four holes in the bottom of the bag. Once again we took up knives and—finally--punctured the bag.
After adding a small amount of water, the directions stated in an oh-this-is-so-simple tone, to squeeze the bag to mix the water with the nondirt soil until it resembled bread dough. I kneaded the bag until my hands ached, and then passed the bag to Diana. As she bore down with all of her pent-up frustration the color of the water leaking out of the punctured holes changed from clear to pink. We thought this was just the soil’s color. Then it changed to a brighter shade, and when she pulled her hand away from the bag, a long ribbon of crimson blood flowed out.
“You’re bleeding! Are you okay?” I folded a dish towel up, and pressed down on the gash clearly visible at the top of a finger.
”I’m fine. A little blood doesn’t bother me.”
“Even when it’s your own?”
“Not at all.”
In an attempt to rinse the mud and blood mixture from her hands, some of it splashed onto a sleeve of her linen shirt. I grabbed a kitchen towel and dish soap and tried to remove the large stain. Most of it faded, but one spot remained.
“Out damn spot!” I intoned, as I continued to work on it. “Merchant of Venice.”
“Oh, Barbara. That’s not MOV (actor’s parlance) that’s “MacBeth!”
With a bandaid affixed to Diana’s finger, but with the bulb not yet in the dirt, we discovered an additional small strip of paper instructions. The black type on gray paper was so pale we’d assumed the paper was blank.
“Maybe we should take a break before we continue," I suggested.
“No way! We’ll finish. Then we’ll eat.”
We squinted to read these additional instructions. Roughly stated: If we didn’t want the growing spike of the plant to grow high and tip over and break, we should make a solution of 5% alcohol by adding water to 40% proof hard spirits, such as vodka, and stir that mixture into the dirt. That supposedly would stunt the spike’s growth.
“Maybe there’s some vodka way back on that high shelf,” I said, and began to search. “I think we need to do this. There isn’t enough dirt in the container to hold a chopstick upright and after all of our work and time, the plant stem will fall over and break.”
“If you do find some vodka, we’re not giving it to a plant,” she said, “I’m going to drink it!”
We spent fifteen minutes cleaning up the floor, counter, sink, and our hands, and then I ordered pizza. As we waited for the delivery, wine glasses in hand, I said, “We could have boiled this wine down to make the mixture they suggested. Now, how much wine would we have needed to make it 46% proof? Can you do the math?”
Diana gave me a look, but didn’t even bother to answer.
I left container-with-bulb on the table. The next morning, even though I was afraid the spot might be too cold and nip a tender shoot, I placed the container with the bulb near a window where it would get hours of direct sunlight. Unfortunately, there were very few sunny days. Each day I’d check on the plants progress. It took weeks before there was any hint of green, and the stem seemed stuck at two inches. But when it reached three inches it took off and hit twelve in four days.
Now as I write this, Lent has begun. It’ll be Easter before we know it--in the snap of a kabuki fan. The fragile white blossom of my recalcitrant bulb waves at the end of a not-too-long stem with no need of a chopstick to prop it up. I recognize it was indeed worth the time and the effort spent, even my friend’s blood, to implant it. Though maybe I should check with her about that.
