Little known truths about lilies of the valley

[gentle music]

Nancy Jorgensen: It was May 1977 when my grandmother, Nana, led me to her basement, past the black iron cookstove, then the shelves of home-canned beans and beets. I sniffed the stale scent of Wisconsin wood fires and the mustiness of potatoes in storage, odors familiar to me since childhood. “Come see the lilies,” Nana said, as she leaned the screen door open and planted one leather shoe into her shady backyard.

Nancy Jorgensen: I was 22 and just married, but Nana’s gardens still felt like home. “Bring that shovel,” she said. “We’ll dig some for your new house.” Nana cultivated other species too. Phlox, daffodils, violets, pansies. She coaxed each into a vibrant melody until her country yard trilled with color. Every year a new song, but her refrain always lilies of the valley.

Nancy Jorgensen: Four decades later, Nana’s darlings transform my spring landscape from a dirt and grass hoedown to a frothy white minuet. Nana has been gone many years, but her lilies still sing and sway.

Nancy Jorgensen: Nurseries call them a high-maintenance plant, but Nana considered their spreading a virtue. Their duty in life, like hers, to place roots, scatter beauty, and pass gifts on to a new generation. Lilies of the valley thrive in shade. As a woman of the 1920s, so did Nana. Her list of chores cast long shadows over each day.

Nancy Jorgensen: Wife and mother was not her first choice of vocation. Many years earlier, she dreamed of an education and a life devoted to healing. “I always wanted to be a nurse,” she said. Instead, she lived, like neighboring farm wives, in her husband’s shadow, reflecting warmth and light toward him.

Nancy Jorgensen: Like Nana, lilies of the valley rise early and bloom in the dawn of summer. Slender columns strut low to the ground, each boasting up to a dozen tiny flowers. Pure white, only millimeters across. Lilies of the valley symbolize rebirth, purity, youth, and happiness.

Nancy Jorgensen: But Nana delivered them to the grave of her son, a sailor in the U.S. Navy, and later her husband, who died at only 59. And then another son, whose heart suddenly gave out. In life’s valleys, her lilies intoned a requiem.

Nancy Jorgensen: My 30-something daughters inherited Nana’s love of gardening. Gwen, a professional athlete, sows kale, plants parsley, and nurtures her bed of mint. Elizabeth buys seedlings from her high school students, who grow them in biology. For my daughters, planting is play. The stakes are low. If their gardens produce, they make a caprese salad or add chives to lettuce from the farmer’s market. They have none of Nana’s worries about climate’s uncontrollables, like rain, sun, drought, cold, or heat, that could result in hungry children.

Nancy Jorgensen: Two generations on either side of me relishing the wonder of a seed, the beauty in a bloom, the gratification of growing. Nana’s gardens became her vocation. She buried regrets and tended her plants as she would have tended patients. My daughters garden at their leisure, free to pursue their callings: teacher and writer, professional athlete, or nurse, if they so choose.

[door opening]

[gentle music]