wild plums

Nettie’s bouquet of wild plums and my beautiful hens from lovely Lynn of @seaangelsvintage

Nettie presented me with a small bouquet of wild plum blossoms today - I had spotted a handful blooming on my way to pick her up at my mom’s - there are fewer and fewer of them to be seen around here, though they used to fill the ditches and waterways in my childhood, their frothy, creamy-white flowers filling the air with fragrance around Easter-time. This small bouquet perfumed the car as we drove home and worked their magic in the kitchen as well, and half-way through afternoon chores I realized I was still smelling them and I thought somehow I was carrying the perfume in my hair or clothing, but realized after a few moments musing about it, that I was smelling the plums blooming in the copse south of the house, their fragrance carried on the wind.

We planted 75 small whips of Prunus americana (wild plum or American plum) nine years ago when we were just settling into this acreage. It was one of the first things we did and it seemed significant, meaningful, if a little hopeless, as we dug through the tough sod and planted what looked like little more than twigs which were almost impossible to spot (save for the small piles of wood mulch) in the sea of brome grass when we were done. I walked along that double row of plums today to see how they were doing. I suppose maybe 20 or 30 have survived, most of them being choked out by grass or succumbing to drought or eaten by rabbits or deer in the first few seasons. Those that remain are still small and insignificant looking, only one or two look as though they might have a few flowers this year. But this will be the first time any of them blooms, and I suppose that if two or three can really become established, mature trees that begin to send out suckers, there might eventually be a thicket here, the way I imagined it, even if I don’t see it in my lifetime.

Prunus americana

Leonard in the plum thicket south of the house

There are plums all along the waterway in the field south of our house. It isn’t a copse, really, though I used that word earlier - it’s just a low spot in the field that’s been left to nature, which seems more and more like a rarity - most waterways have been cleared of trees and shrubs in recent years, if they’ve been left at all, but this one is an exception and every spring I’m drawn out to visit the plums while they’re blooming, standing for a few moments in their profusion of petals and sweetness, perhaps the biggest show of romance I can think of that happens naturally here on the prairie, where most things are subtle and nuanced - the plums are exuberant extravagance, bursting forth for just a few days with their blossoms, which are quickly blown away by spring winds, leaving the plums rather like Cinderella after the ball - looking and probably feeling a little plain in their regular clothes.

The morning after we brought Nettie home, I remember waking up on the sofa in the library, which sat in front of an east-facing window, the bassinet next to me lit up by the rising sun, and the smell of wild plums filling the air. It seemed other-worldly, I felt hardly in my body. I think some of that was hormones and breastfeeding and really I have so few clear memories from Nettie’s first year, but that is one of them. The smell of wild plums and the bassinet and daffodils and the tips of her black hair glowing in the golden sun of an early April morning and her tiny curled body in her rosebud sleeper, everything soft and quiet and sweet.

Last night as I walked back to the house after shutting the animals in, I heard the back door slam. It was dark already and I squinted to see if the wind had caught it or if a cat or dog had pushed it open, and then saw a little figure walking towards me in her winter coat and scarf, though the night was mild. “Hey Mom, I came to take a nighttime stroll with you,” she said, slipping her gloved hand into mine as we met on the path, and though this would be our first ‘nighttime stroll’ together I smiled and only laughed inside and replied like we often did this, “this is a good night for a stroll,” and squeezed her hand and we walked towards the black shadows of the hedgerow and she asked “What’s that smell?” and I said “that’s the wild plums blooming.” We stood still at the edge of the trees, the wind blowing our hair back from our faces, the smell of the plums filling our noses, and she said “There must be thousands and thousands of them,” and I said “Tomorrow we’ll go and see them before they’re gone.”

the order of the universe

This post was started way back in July - I wanted so badly to share what my beautiful cosmos flowers meant to me - how they had affected me this summer - but couldn’t find my way into articulating my strangely deep feelings about this common-enough flower, part of the daisy family, named after the Greek word ‘kosmos,’ or universe, that symbolizes order, harmony and peace. All perfectly lovely things to know, but it felt silly to make so much of it. So I put the post away, watched the cosmos peak and start to wane, the foliage become droopy and yellowed, then brown, enjoyed the last burst of flowers as the plants surrendered to the elements, and moved on, not thinking much more of them until this past week and the birth and death of a sweet baby donkey. The cosmos had one last gift to give in order to help me lay her to rest.

The first frost of the season came on September 30, and few of my flowers escaped. It was an unexpected, abrupt end to my summer of flowers. The following night, our donkey Hazel gave birth to a foal, a little girl. All summer we suspected she might be pregnant and a few weeks ago, we had a vet ultrasound her. She told us she found no heartbeat, that she was simply fat. I admit to feeling skeptical - Hazel’s figure didn’t look “fat” to me in the way our older donkey Tru carries weight - it looked swollen just as a pregnant woman’s belly looks. I assumed, however, that if she was near full-term, the vet would have found a heartbeat, so we didn’t expect a baby for some months, if there would be one at all - a happening that was in truth so frightening to me, I didn’t like to imagine it.

But early on Friday morning, Dave went down to the sheep pen to check on Jane, who had been acting a little slow the last few days, and noticed something in the donkey pen. A very small, dark shape - the three grown donkeys gathered around it. It was a baby, still wet, and hardly able to stand.

I was full of fear as I walked down to the barn, the full Harvest moon bright in the western sky, patches of frost on the grass path. I think I knew the first time I saw Emmy, that she wasn’t all here. She stood still, her too-big head bowed a little as Hazel nudged and circled around her. She never became more with it, not that morning as I worked to help her nurse, not that afternoon, even after we managed to get her to drink a bottle of Hazel’s colostrum mixed with some colostrum replacer. Not the next day, which we spent coaxing and encouraging her, trying to get her going. She remained subdued, distant, and fragile. So, so fragile. 

I wouldn’t have named her, I’ll admit - I wanted to save myself that grief at least - but Nettie was determined, and right, in giving her a name. Emerald. It isn’t what I would have picked, but none of what happened is what I would have chosen. None of it is fair, or makes sense, none of it is what anyone deserved - least of all poor baby Emmy or her mama Hazel. I wanted so badly to give them long, happy, healthy lives together - it’s what I want for all our animals here - and there was definitely a part of me that wanted it not just for the animals, but for the ethos of Sweet Haven. I wanted to have a sweet family unit, to show what an animal sanctuary could nurture - I wanted a success story I could share, and to put it more candidly, that I could market. 

I suspect few of us are pure, even in our acts of charity and kindness. I know I give people flowers because it makes them happy, but also because it makes me happy, because it helps me feel better about myself, gives me a sense of identity and purpose. That’s why I care for animals, too. I love them, yes. I always have loved animals and I love them now more than I ever have - love more of them and harder because I’ve made it part of my life, accepted it as a calling - but not purely out of love - some of it is obligation, and some of it akin to self-sacrifice, a way to make peace with my inner critic, who constantly tells me I haven’t done enough to really be a “good” person, that perhaps suffering in the name of something good will purify me.

I’ve always thought animals were nearer to pure than humans. I can remember trying to explain that to my parents as a small child. And having spent the last five days with baby Emmy, I feel it’s just as true as I ever did. Emmy was a completely perfect soul, in a body that wasn’t built for this world. She didn’t seem to have any survival instinct, not even an awareness of her own body, really. She was here but she wasn’t here, in the grit of it, as we have to be to survive on this planet. 

Nettie was able to minister pure love to Emmy and Hazel without dread or grief, and witnessing her open, joyful heart was a beautiful balm during a time that felt extremely sad and dark.

I’ve never dug a grave before but I wanted to dig Emmy’s. It’s been warm, almost hot the last few days, and the ground hard from months without rain. I watered the spot between my old Petey cat and sweet Lilly goat so it would be softer. It took several hours to dig out the packed, tacky clay soil between trips down to the barn to comfort Hazel and trips into the house to fix Nettie’s lunch. I thought of the folks who had hand-dug most of the graves in the pioneer cemetery behind our house, and I wondered if any women had dug graves for their loved ones. Of course they would have had to sometimes, I thought, there would have been no one else to do it, or maybe they wanted to, as I did. Emmy’s grave didn’t need to be large, she was hardly bigger than our biggest cat, but I wanted to dig it as deep as my arm would reach. I don’t know why but that seemed right somehow.

Just as I knew when I got up Tuesday, that I wanted to make her a funeral wreath to wear. I went out to the garden in the half-dark in my pajamas, as I’ve done so many times over the summer, and found that underneath the toppled cosmos plants, there were still just enough flowers blooming for Emmy’s wreath. So I picked her snowpuff cosmos for peace, phlox for sweet dreams, white snapdragons for innocence and purity, ammi for sanctuary, and Sweet Annie for eternal love and wove them into I think the most beautiful flower crown I’ve ever made. There is something ethereal about it, just like Emmy, perhaps because the flowers themselves are so near to death.

Nettie chose one of her baby blankets to wrap her in and I lifted her onto it and placed the funeral wreath around her neck. She looked beautiful, not as beautiful as she had in life, but sweet and peaceful. I took a few pictures even though I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to look at them. I let Hazel smell her baby one last time, and then I carried her up to her grave and laid her down to face the setting sun. It was hard to fill the soil in around her and I don’t know if I could have done it without my dad there to encourage me. In a few minutes she was under the earth and I believe I felt something like peace, or at least relief that nothing harsh or violent could touch her now - that whatever stardust she was made of would slowly and peacefully cycle back into the universe through the roots of plants and the petals of flowers that will grow over her.