Autumn’s Irony

By Anne-Marie Oomen
Sun contributor
Finally, with our house sort of finished, we turn to landscaping. Landscaping in our woods is simple because the chance of a lawn is nil unless one is willing to cut trees and we have vowed—no more tree cutting. Instead, we tuck the house so far into the dappled arms of forest that even the heartiest veggies will grow nothing but tendrils—it is that shady. In the one or two spots that actually get light a few hours a day, I finally build raised beds and set shade tolerant perennials—hosta, astilbe, ferns—which adapt with ease.

I also invite the woods back in, coaxing leeks, Dutchman’s Britches, Trillium, and wild columbine as close to the house as they will grow in disturbed soil. I plant myrtle on the south side and let wild raspberry brambles reshape a northern jungle. In summer, it feels as though something wild and hungry will climb from the leaf shadows, peer into our windows or squeeze under the doors. But I have come to love the way living in the woods encourages me to look at the shade of the world. I love the metaphor of looking more closely at these shadows, and have come to feel the comfort of release that early dark brings, even on the longest days. Over time, I too have become shade-tolerant.
But none of these insights eases my hunger for color.
One September day at the post office in Empire, I find an abandoned Dutch bulb catalogue. The colors on the cover look alive. I ask if I may have it, and Ginny interrupts her letter filing to holler over the counter, “Oh sure. Folks just leave their extra catalogues. Help yourself.” Then, glancing at what I am holding, she grins.
I pour over clusters of tulips, exotic daffodils, and those bravest hearts of all, the delicate crocuses. I decide to order economy tulips and daffodils for naturalizing because I know as a first-time experimenter with bulbs, I might make mistakes and these seem forgiving. I also fall in love with color names—another weakness being words—and when I order, I choose some simply for that pleasure: tulips named Scarlet Dynasty, Queen of the Night, Lavender Rembrants, Rose Angeliques, Touched Greenlands, Autumn Apricots. That’s not even mentioning crocuses. When I am done, the accumulative order for bulbs is for over 400.
They come UPS with instructions to keep them in the dark until the soil is cool but I open every bag and roll the bulbs in my hands. Here is dream and hope in its raw form, shaped like the turrets of exotic India. Through autumn, I plant in the long light of late afternoons. The light grows as the leaves fall. As I dig and press bulbs into soil, I am aware of ironies. We place these plain seed-things into the subterranean—essentially burying them. All through the process, planting clusters of dafs, lining up tulips and—where they will surprise me—dozens of crocuses. I know this irony. I am closing something alive off from an essential light that comes to my woods only with the autumnal equinox. I am putting the bulbs into darkness, just as I do my own being.
When I am done, no one but the dog knows where everything is planted, no one can tell what blooming anticipation is buried six scattered inches beneath the fallen.
Now, I settle toward my woodsy winter, its quiet and work. But I dream almost daily of what is happening in the dark earth. I imagine that cream sphere splitting open, sending out its white roots. Soon all the leaves will be empty, trees bare, and the blazingly cold and brilliantly monochromatic landscape of winter will surround me. In the spring, the leaves will come and make our woods dark again, as though we above the earth were moving underground, but the bulbs planted underground in fall will send up color, raising the spirit, and will make the world bright for having come from that earthy darkness.