Hazelbrakes in Autumn
Counting her cane, Miss Elsie Dreibelbis was an eighty-six pound wisp of white hair, osteoporosis and gardening lore. "Often wrong, never in doubt, that’s me," she told the young woman, Jory, who tried visibly to keep an open mind. Jory, though short, wore a sports top, which displayed biceps with veins, triceps, pectoral muscles and box-turtle abs. One tattoo peeped over the waist band of her skin-tight jogging shorts, just below her navel, another cautiously slid out on the piano-leg of her thigh, and of gardening interest, a rose in blue ink bloomed on her shoulder-blade. She could definitely have carried Miss Elsie in one hand and the lawn mower in the other. Elsie had her fetch a metal-and-web chair, so she could supervise the new bed in the mild October sun.
"I was so glad when Jane told me you were available to help out this autumn," she said, getting seated. "I’ve been lusting after Mexican men." The girl looked startled and Elsie chuckled. "But they’re all occupied mowing other people’s lawns and you can’t hire them for little jobs." Jory gave a snort of amusement.
Using garden hose, they laid out the curving edge of the bed along the driveway’s gravel hip. "It’ll screen the garage from view as folks drive up the lane," Elsie explained.
Jory straightened to look at the approach from the road. "Hey, yeah," she exclaimed, "that’ll work. What’re you going to plant, bushes?"
"It’s going to be a hazelbrake, Jory," Elsie told her, pleased to have puzzled the girl again. "So thick entangled, As one continuous brake, The undergrowth of shrubs," she quoted. "Only it’ll be a bit of paradise regained instead of a bit of Paradise Lost, especially in late winter and early spring." Jory gave another appreciative snort, so Elsie went on. "The Dutch and the Arnold Arboretum have improved on the twisty little threads of Chinese witch hazel flowers, so instead of just the usual orange, now there’s ‘Jelena’ in cinnamon, ‘Diana’ in real red, ‘Arnold’s Promise’ (which ought to produce gold rings) in clear yellow, and a whole bunch more. They give you flowers at the first hint of spring, even with snow on the ground. They might even bloom in the fall, they’re that eager. But you can force a branch in a vase just about anytime you get tired of winter. I’ve got them all on order, but first we need to get this bed ready."
"Why don’t you just dig a hole for each one and be done with it?" Jory asked.
Elsie shook her head. "Then it’d be just a row of shrubs. What I want is a wall of green, 'Close matted, bur and brake and briar,' as Mr. Tennyson said. Now you get the cart and find the hay-fork. We’re going to spread that compost pile over there and you’ll find some bags of sand and gypsum to help break up the clay. They like a softer, loamy soil. And there’s a couple of bales of peat and flowers of sulfur in the garage to acidify the soil. Oh, and a box of super-phosphate. I guess that’ll do it."
"How do you know what to mix in?" the girl called over her shoulder.
Shortly, she returned with the sixty-pound sack of sulfur in her arms. Elsie confided, "I sent a soil sample off to the state lab. Don’t tell a soul. Anyway, there’s no such a thing as too much compost. Use the cart, child, you’ll hurt yourself." Jory snorted again at the thought, but she got the cart. All through the early afternoon, Elsie watched as the girl trotted back and forth, spreading soil amendment. Then Elsie had her get out the old, red tiller and make a first pass over the mound. After that, she asked Jory to smooth the edge with a shovel, tossing the big clods into the center and they ran the tiller again. "Pretty neat old machine you have here," Jory called out cheerfully, guiding it with one hand the length of the bed, so as not to step in the tilled swath.
"That was my sixtieth birthday present from my husband," hollered Elsie. "It’s twenty-two years old." Jory blinked and shouted over the motor’s noise, "So am I."
When the new bed was a smooth crescent of soul-satisfying tilth, Jory was not even tired. She fetched the bundle of short stakes for Elsie. About twelve feet apart in a zig-zag, down the center went six markers for the hazels. "Now, all this wants a bit of light shade, so right here in the middle, in from the outside edge, that’s it, we’re going to set a cucumber tree. That’s a native American, magnolia acuminata, that gets a hundred feet tall, with nice, big leaves and red seed pods, if you can see them up there; the flowers aren’t much, though. It gets huge, with an enormous girth. Down each side, about fifteen, maybe twenty feet, there! Put in a stake. Those will be native American pawpaw. They never get too big, but they have large leaves and interesting purple flowers. Possums will like the fruit, though the won’t get any for a few years. You’ll have to come back in a couple of weeks to put in all my little plants when they arrive. A couple of tree rhododendrons will flank the magnolia. There will be two dozen bluebells right under the hazels and a hundred light-violet crocus. They’ll all multiply over the years to form a carpet. There’ll be island of wake-robin and other trillium, some of the new hellebores for late fall bloom, and maybe I’ll let a pink clematis montana ramble across the tops of the hazels, but it won’t like the sulfur in the soil. We could dig that out and add lime."
Jory stood back with her hands on her hips, looking at the soft earth marked only with her own foot prints, leading from stake to stake. For the first time, she addressed her employer by name. "Elsie, how long do you figure it will take for all that to grow up and look like anything?"
Miss Elsie sat back and looked at the fertile loam. "Well, the bulbs and maybe the trilliums will bloom next spring, though they’ll be sparse yet a couple of years. But all the fun is in the growing, don’t you know?"
"But the trees and all?" Jory asked, cautiously, as if afraid to imply too much about Miss Elsie’s years.
"Why, girl," she said, "I see it all now."
appeared October, 2001