My Grandmother's Peonies

In the 1940s, four years after my mother was born, my grandmother Cleora moved her family from the Dorsey (pronounced Dar-cee) farm across Church Creek to the house where my aunt still lives. Cleora and Vivian (yes, my grandfather was Vivian) had "set up housekeeping" at Dorsey farm when they married in 1924. Both were relatively late in age, my grandfather 29 and my grandmother 23. In 1925, their daughter Vivian was born (Yes, my aunt. I also had a great uncle named Vivian and Vivian is my given middle name) and two and a half years later, my uncle Tyrus--both born at home. Over the next nearly twenty years, the Brannocks moved about every four years, whenever my grandfather became "dissatisfied." They were at the Dorsey farm for the second time and this was their sixth, and thankfully final, move.

My grandfather Vivian was laid up in bed, recovering from a badly broken leg which he suffered in a fall from the hay loft down onto the tongue of a piece of farm equipment. With four year old Joan (my mother) at home and no license to drive, my grandmother loaded up a skiff over and over again and rowed everything--the chickens, coops, furniture, all but the piano and the cookstove--across the Creek to the new farm. The move took place in January, by which time winter had surely come to the Eastern Shore. The farm was owned by my grandfather's sister, Willie, and she had the ramshackle house fixed up with new windows and other repairs. They still had to get water from a well, but this was their first home with electricity. It was 1943.

Cleora also carried some peonies from Dorsey farm to the Church Creek place. With everything else she had to transport, these flowers must have been special to her. Hers had been a hard, rough life, growing up second to the youngest in a farm family with four brothers and two sisters, one of whom was rougher than most men (I knew her late in her life and although she was sweet to me, she had a terrible tongue and was a full two inches taller than my six-foot grandmother). The fact that Cleora took the time and effort to transport these flowers across the river demonstrates the sentimentality I always saw in her...and her tenacity.

About 10 years ago, my Aunt Vivian was mowing down and tearing up most of the perennial plants she had tended for well over 50 years, but she did call my mother and me to ask if we wanted some of Cleora's peonies. With no idea of where I would put them, I immediately drove over with my mother and dug several boxes full to take home. Actually, as I recall, my mother dug them for me. I'm thinking I may have been pregnant at the time, but since my mother is a slightly smaller but no less tenacious version of my grandmother, she probably just did the work for me. I transported my grandmother's peonies home by car, and planted them along my driveway. I soon discovered I had also planted an insidious patch of Dorchester County wiregrass.

Two years ago, we decided to renovate our attached garage into a family room and placed a detached workshop/garage directly over the spot where I'd planted my grandmother's peonies. Like all projects, everything happened at once and I found myself in July needing to transplant some bearded iris and my grandmother's peonies, which had spread beautifully into a 2-foot by 10-foot border. With a sense of futility, I dug them from the dry summer soil and placed them in a backyard bed. A few stalks of green leaves emerged last year, but no flowers. Meanwhile, the patch of wiregrass thrived and began coming up through the stone bed on which our new workshop sat. This year, only a few more stalks appeared, and still no flowers. Late this April, I began to worry that they were truly gone, and with them a piece of my dear grandmother, who died 23 years ago on May 2, 1985.

Last week as I mowed the grass, I saw a touch of pink peeking from a fat bud at the tip of a peony stalk. I investigated and discovered three pink blooms and two white blooms were about to emerge. They were small, and the one that had already bloomed was a bit bug-chewed, but they were alive! I pray that they will continue to slowly but surely recover from their harsh, mid-summer move. After all, if they could survive a trip in January 65 years ago, they can survive anything.

With my attention focused on the vegetable and fruit gardens this year, my landscaping certainly has suffered. Most years, I have weeded and mulched by this time, my annuals are in the ground and my pots are all in bloom on their window shelves. Instead, I have come to admire rows of red and green lettuce, bright red strawberries against dark green leaves, tall onion greens and feathery carrot fronds. The practical in me has chosen to elevate food crops over ornamentals. With all the work to be done, taking care of flowers comes second. But like my grandmother, I am sentimental, and there will always be a place in my garden for things of beauty.

My grandmother, Cleora Brannock, with her hydrangeas, just as I remember her in the early 1980s.

© 2008 Jenifer Dolde