The Time of Lilies

(Star Gazer Oriental Lily) 

Liles reign in July. Their stately spires and glorious blooms take centerstage when the Japanese beetles are at their worse and my poor roses are frazzled and frayed. Two years ago, without realizing how big they'd get, I planted bulbs of a large white lily. The image accompanying the advertisement pictured the stalks towering over a small child, so I figured maybe about waist/chest height on me. I had not yet heard of tree lilies and missed the image of these flowers rising above a women. The first season they were big but not like this second year. They're taller than me. Lilies rise from the Memorial Garden like Jack's beanstalk, with an incredibly sweet fragrance. Their pure white flowers scent the air, especially in the evening, but it's always heavenly near them. 

 One of our Old Order Mennonite neighbors called me about these giants. She frequently passes our farm in her horse and buggy and has ample opportunity to admire the flowers. These lilies are like nothing she's ever seen. If I get around to it this fall, I'll divide this clump and give her several bulbs. I also grow the Star Gazer Oriental lilies and a variety of others. Lilies are magical additions to the garden. Last fall I fell all over Breck's lily grab bag sale and wound up with quite a few new varieties. Exciting! But I was busy getting these bulbs in until Christmas. Fortunately, the ground wasn't frozen hard. Last winter was mild. 

Who knows about 2021-2022? 

 My main challenge with lilies isn't winter but spring. I mulch the bulbs well to discourage early growth. Even so, they are almost always lured out by an unseasonable warm spell in April and then zapped by frost. Every spring I'm out covering clumps of lilies to try and protect the sensitive stalks from the icy blast. If a stalk is hit, it's gone. Tiger lilies are more resistant to the cold. I also grow daylilies and they can handle lower temps than the Oriental and Asiatic varieties. These beauties are worth the battle, I remind myself on those chilly spring evenings. They are royalty. (White tree lilies below)

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they toil not, neither do they spin; yet I say unto you, Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." ~Matthew 6: 28.

Lilies and I have a long history. I memorized this verse (part of a longer passage) as a child and proudly recited it for the entire school. Those were different days. It was a public school in Bristol, Tennessee. I've always liked this passage as it assures us of God's care, but also because of the lilies. I loved flowers even then. I checked to see what variety of lily is referred to in this verse and it seems they are a native red anemone. Very pretty, but not what I'd envisioned. I guess something got lost in translation. Just as well, the word anemone would have gone over my head as a child.

(Above: Red carpet of flowers in Shokeda Forest, Israel. Image by Zachi Evenor.)

If you haven't ever planted lilies, give them a go. Watch for sales. I have several dozen bulbs to get in the ground from a summer sale. I plant them in among the roses and other flowers. A perfect cottage garden plant, the look I aim for, and if you're seeking inspiration, lilies have that in abundance

(Tiger Lilies)

(The white lilies again)

The Time of Daffodils

I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden. ~Ruth Stout

Daffodils are such happy flowers. I can't imagine anyone not liking them. They're easy to grow and mix in beautifully with crocus, hyacinths, and other early blooms. Daffodils have always been on the farm. My mother-in-law had them, and the families who lived here before her. I've divided old clumps, spread them around, and planted new varieties over the years. The waving yellow and white blooms are a spirit lifting sight. When I'm outside working among the flowers, I feel more peaceful and not as freaked out about the pandemic. Like countless others, I'm at home for the duration and especially grateful for the garden. Having an early spring in the valley is a boon. I wish I could share the beauty with everyone. This is the best I can do.

Spring forever appears
      the soothing music part
      of lyrics unspoken.
It thaws the frozen fears,
      mends the wounded heart
      that Winter has broken.
~Aarno Davidson

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month. ~Henry Van Dyke

The sun has come out... and the air is vivid with spring light. ~Byron Caldwell Smith, letter to Kate Stephens

A little madness in the Spring
Is wholesome even for the King.
~Emily Dickinson

Winter sprouts springtime wings and flies off into the budding year. ~Terri Guillemets

Daffodils, so bright and yellow,
      Hyacinths of varied hues,
      As they nod their heads, in gladness,
      Telling us they bring good news...
~Gertrude Tooley Buckingham, "Springtime" (1940s)

I sure hope spring brings good news to us all

Dandelion Salad for the Taste of Early Spring!

We've been taught to look upon this humble weed/herb as a plague in our lawns, but perhaps we should have more respect for the much maligned dandelion. The leaves are full of vitamins, so I searched out an old Southern recipe for a tasty hot dressing to pour over the tender greens. Be sure to gather young leaves or they will be too bitter.

You can also use this dressing for other greens like watercress, spinach, and endive. My mother-in-law made dandelion salad years ago, then forgot her recipe. But I found it in the Mennonite Country Cookbook, which is about as country as you can get. I gathered tender dandelion greens and mixed them with some spinach I wintered over, and made the salad yesterday. Very good.

For The Salad itself:

4 cups chopped dandelion leaves

3 hard-boiled eggs

3 slices of bacon

For The Hot Dressing:

1 1/2 Tablespoons flour (or gluten-free flour)

1 tsp. salt

1 egg

2 Tablespoons sugar

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

2 cups milk or water

Wash and chop dandelion leaves. Cut bacon in pieces and fry. Remove bacon from drippings. In a separate bowl, mix together dry ingredients, add egg, vinegar and water or milk. Stir until well blended. Cook this mixture in the bacon drippings until thickened and cool slightly. Pour over dandelions and mix lightly. Garnish with sliced eggs and bacon. If you are reluctant to use bacon fat in the dressing, I suggest substituting butter. Adjust proportions to suit your taste.~

The valley is greening up and looking far more hopeful than the brown we've lived with since November. A blanket of snow is pretty but we haven't had much white stuff this year, though the rain has finally returned after months of drought. I'm in my 'giddy about the earth awakening' mode and have been chronicling spring in the garden. Early crocus, snowdrops, and miniature iris are in bloom now. These faithful flowers come back each February/March and are as tough as nails. They have to be with our crazy weather this time of year.

"A house without a garden or orchard is unfurnished and incomplete."  ~A. Bronson Alcott (1799–1888), quoted from louisamayalcott.org

Many things grow in the garden that were never sown there. ~Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732

One of the worst mistakes you can make as a gardener is to think you're in charge. ~Janet Gillespie

My little bit of earth in the front garden is one of the places that I find my bearings. The rhythm of my day begins with a cup of coffee and a little bit of weeding or dreaming. ~Betsy Cañas Garmon, www.wildthymecreative.com

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Ever Schnellisched Anybody?

To schnellisch someone, say a naughty child, means to give them a quick flick using your thumb and forefinger--a mild, but attention grabbing reprimand. I learned this Pennsylvania Dutch expression from my Mennonite mother-in-law. My husband, Dennis, suggested I give Puppy Cooper a schnellisch when he vociferously refused to stop chewing on my hand while I crawled around wiping the kitchen floor. I didn't, but that's how common this term is in our household. 

(Not far from our farm)

My mother-In-Law has dementia but remembers old expressions and ways of doing things, like boiling up her wash in a big kettle before they got a washing machine, and it would have been a primitive model. I'm researching early Mennonites for a ghostly time travel romance back to the Civil War era in the Shenandoah Valley. Dennis comes from a long line of German/Swiss Mennonites who settled in our lush valley about the time my Scots-Irish ancestors did, the early-mid 1700's, but at opposite ends. The two groups didn't intermingle much until our generation. We were high school sweethearts, and I joined the New Order Mennonite church when we were engaged soon after my graduation. We married young. I've learned there are MANY orders of Mennonites and he's related to them all, but my Presbyterian roots are strong. I'm a part of this community, and yet apart. Many of our neighbors are Old Orders and buggies frequently trot past our farm. They are good people. 

(Images taken spring and fall in front of our farm)

One of Dennis' Shank ancestors had a house and barn burned during Sheridan's infamous march into the valley, the autumn of 1864, when he burned and plundered 'the breadbasket of the Confederacy.' Most Mennonites were Union sympathizers, considering secession to be treason. Not a popular view in the south. They didn't own slaves, against their beliefs, plus they were pacifists, so refused to fight in the war, but they suffered along with everyone else when Sheridan laid waste to the land. A lot of barns, mills, and some homes went up in flames. Sheridan said a crow would have to pack his lunch to fly from one end of the valley to the other, as little food as the Union army left in its fiery wake. Sheridan didn't care what side folk were on.The suffering that followed his visitation was terrible. The valley was already hard hit by the war. No one who lives here and knows our history would ever name their son Sheridan. I can't imagine how people survived except to hunt and gather from what was left and what they'd managed to hide. My ancestors were here then, too. They left letters and journals about the horrors of war on their doorstep, 'the enemy in our land', and the challenges of daily life. My Virginia forebears fought vigorously for the Confederacy, but that's another story. Back to the Mennonites. 

(Old Order Mennonite Church up the road from us)

While doing my research, I learned many Mennonites and other plain people, such as the Dunkard Brethren and Quakers, ran what they called the Unionist Underground Railroad (separate from the famous one for helping slaves escape). This operation was kept hush hush as they were at constant risk of incurring the wrath of their Confederate supporting neighbors. Sadly, some did. There were murders, burnings, robberies... But Mennonite men who couldn't afford to buy their way out of service in the Confederate Army, or when that was no longer an option, and didn't believe in sending someone to fight in their place, had no choice other than to flee. The Unionist Underground Railroad offered shelter and food in sympathetic homes, called depots, to dissenters until they were guided to mountain hideouts. If the escapees made it to Keyser, West Virginia, they took a train north. If they wanted to remain near their valley families, they hid in the mountains, with furtive trips home, for the duration of the war. They had to hide and hunt or await whatever food family members brought them while watching for Confederate scouts. These guys were ever on the lookout for deserters and draft dodgers and shot them on sight. Several groups of fugitive men were captured and put in Castle Thunder Prison in Richmond where many died. Not a great war to be a conscientious objector. Union sympathizers from some of the non pacifistic denominations also took part in this Underground Railroad but it was mostly Mennonites and similar faiths. No one knows for certain how many men they helped escape, likely hundreds, maybe more, and not only from the valley but also farther south.

(More buggies parked at the church)

Stonewall Jackson was willing to allow dissenters to serve in a non-military capacity. However, Mennonite men refused to support the Confederate war effort period. Jackson then suggested farming and feeding people might qualify as service, but he left the valley after his brilliant campaign in the spring of 1862. Tragically, he was killed in May, 1863.

Until fairly recently, few knew about the existence of the Unionist Underground Railroad. Evidence came to light after the discovery of petitions the federal government allowed citizens to file for compensation of goods, cattle, horses, barns, etc, lost during the conflict. Two conditions must first be met in order to qualify, and most folk didn't. They had to have lost their possessions due to Union not Confederate troops, and prove they were loyal to the Union. This was tough to do when men were threatened with hanging if they didn't vote for secession 'out loud' (no secret ballot) when the vote was taken to determine Virginia's fate. Few men dared to vote no. Of the handful who did, some were hauled back and forced to change their votes. Many Union sympathizers hid and didn't vote at all. Because petitions for compensation were confidential, thousands of Mennonites recounted their plights and pleaded their cases. Hints of the existence of these petitions led to their unearthing in Washington, DC where the records were kept. This find revealed much about the happenings during the war. Otherwise, the Union Underground R.R. wasn't ever spoken of after the war ended, not even with family, for fear of reprisals from resentful neighbors. The descendants of these Civil War Mennonites were unaware of what took place. No doubt, Dennis has ancestors who were part of this secretive operation. He's related to everybody.  

What fascinating story fodder.

***Dennis took all the images except this autumn one by my mom.

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The Poltergeist In Our Old Farm House

Years ago, my son moved into the big white Victorian house on our other farm. We have two farms quite near each other in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and both homes are well over one hundred years old. Some of his guy friends moved in, too, and everything was fine, then he and his fiancée (now wife) began remodeling the house. At first, no one thought much about the noises. Neither of them mentioned a thing to me. Then one night my son called, alone and uneasy. He was hunkered downstairs with the cat. His opening question was, had I said cats ward off ghosts?

No, I'd said they have a heightened awareness of them.

Oh. He informed me about the footsteps he couldn’t account for and an upstairs bedroom with a door that wouldn’t stay shut. No matter how many times he closed it, come morning it was always open. Earlier that week, his fiancé had been distressed when the bathroom doorknob turned and the door opened on her. No one was there. It freaked the cat out. Didn’t do her much good either. She was promptly converted from a disbeliever in ghosts to one strongly considering their reality.

Now, she’d gone away on a trip with her church and none of my son’s other friends were around. The last of his roomies had moved out. I suspected all the remodeling they’d done to the house had stirred something up. So, I went over.

Here, I’ll digress to say I’d dreamed earlier of a small grave plot way back in the fields behind the house and of a restless spirit associated with both. As it turned out there is just such a cemetery, an antiquated one. After I arrived that evening, my son and I went upstairs to the suspect bedroom and shut the door. I wanted to scream, and not just because I’m claustrophobic.

We held hands and I repeated the Exorcism prayer sent to my mother from an Episcopalian woman in England. She’d written my mother about visiting her church manse at the invitation of the new priest who was plagued by a poltergeist–one so violent, it had flung portraits down from the hall and hurled a saucepan lid across the kitchen. But the congregants, along with the priest, had prayed it out. As this was a Christian prayer, my son and I did the same. Never again did he or his fiancé hear footsteps or have any more trouble with doorknobs turning. That bedroom door remained as they left it and the chill feeling I had in the room dissipated.

Now, what do you think of that?

Here’s the Anglican prayer. Do not try this alone if the presence you sense is evil, only with a strong group of Christians, the more, the better. And join hands. Even if you think I’m nuts.

“In the name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost, may this distressed soul be relieved of his obsession with this world and sent to where he belongs.”

I added, ‘go to the light,’ although a truly evil presence won’t, but a troubled, restless one may. Seems only right to offer that as an option.

This is one of the experiences that influenced the writing of my ghostly time travel romance novel Somewhere My Love.

Story Blurb for Somewhere My Love (Somewhere in Time series): 

Fated lovers have a rare chance to reclaim the love cruelly denied them in the past, but can they grasp this brief window in time before it’s too late?

Two hundred years ago Captain Cole Wentworth, the master of an elegant Virginian home, was murdered in his chamber where his portrait still hangs. 

Presently the estate is a family owned museum run by Will Wentworth, a man so uncannily identical to his ancestor that spirit-sensitive tour guide Julia Morrow has trouble recognizing Cole and Will as separate. 

As Julia begins to remember the events of Cole’s death, she must convince Will that history is repeating, and this time he has the starring role in the tragedy. 

The blade is about to fall. 

"A beautiful love story with plenty of suspense and mystery. With a murderer on the loose and a house haunted by the ghosts of the past, can William and Julia figure everything out and survive? Visit Foxleigh Hall and find out."~Night Owl Romance, a Night Owl Top Pick  

"As I read Somewhere My Love, I recalled the feelings I experienced the first time I read Daphne DuMaurier's Rebecca long ago. Using the same deliciously eerie elements similar to that gothic romance, Beth Trissel has captured the haunting dangers, thrilling suspense and innocent passions that evoke the same tingly anticipation and heartfelt romance I so enjoyed then, and still do now." ~joysann for Publisher's Weekly


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