The Time Machine in My BackYard
This blog incorporates my love of time travel-related themes in literature and film and The Naked Lady blooms in my backyard. I will also talk about why old people cry (a lot), tell stories nobody wants to hear, and why we get so intensely sentimental. That’s because we are living time machines. We are all the ages we have ever been as quoted by several people including myself.
My story began a couple of weeks ago during a hot spell in SoCal. I looked out into the barren backyard while sipping coffee and saw a dot of pink color among the layers of pine needles from the summer drop. We don’t water back there all summer but let the ground die off and get covered in pine needles. It looks like most of the ground cover in the mountains. Then what we do is when winter hits, we remove as much pine material as possible and begin watering and rely on rain from Fall to Winter. That’s when the dormant dichondra will pop up, making a fairly nice green blanket out there till it gets warm. That yard has had 40 years or more of different lawns, ground cover, etc. only to end up (once again) covered in needles. We’ve tried it all and gave up. The only thing we never did was turn it into cement. The yard has a slanted and terrible nonflat shape. The backyard design for this house in our neighborhood is probably one of the worst. It floods in the rainy season. We were warned about this yard when we bought it. That’s another blog I’ll skip for now.
So, I see this dot of pink and notice a small thin brown stalk. I almost dropped the heavy coffee mug. You see it happened like this. Over 40 years ago my stepmom Mary (who loved gardening) brought over a plant to christen our new house. It wasn’t just a store-bought plant. Nope. This was a family heirloom. She carried a bag of brown bulbs in some dirt. The bulbs had been divided from her yard that had been divided and cut from my great Aunt Vesta’s house in San Bernardino.
Mary was part of my secret family, my adoptive family. The crazy family. The family I slowly broke away from several times during adulthood. But having a new house and a new baby changed everything including my heart so Mary became a more frequent visitor.
Mary planted the bulbs near the back wall in our small slanted backyard. I believe there were 3 sections all spaced a few feet apart. I didn’t give them much thought.
I remembered seeing my Aunt Vesta’s pink lilies and thought they were pretty when I was a little kid. I figured since I did NOT have a green thumb and if they were easy, I wouldn’t kill them. We had sprinklers at the time and a very green lawn so the watering would happen regularly.
After Mary left and for many months after she planted the bulbs, I ignored the LIVING DAYLIGHT out of them. (me: laughing as I write this)
This is when the time machine began recording the sequences of life underground. In Spring, the lovely green bushy shrubs would start. And then like clockwork as the last week in August or 1st week of September every year, the same thing began to occur. The green leaves die and turn white and look like corn stalks that get dry. Then the small thin brown stalks emerge with pink buds on top. Then the magic happens as several lilies pop out. They are fragrant in the evening. Truly they are so lovely. And the sweetest shades of pink happen. They are light pink at the beginning and get brighter each week. I would get the blooms for several weeks, and then they slowly die off. You trim the dead ones and let it finish. Then, when all are spent, you cut the stalks back to the ground. And so, it goes. October brings more pine needles that start covering it all. What I didn’t realize for years was, the ridiculously annoying pine needles were making mulch for them. Who Knew? Not me the nongardener. Maybe I was the accidental gardener.
When my little daughter was about two, I took a slew of photos with a film camera. It was late summer taken of her near her swing set. Lo and behold I had dressed her in the cutest Carter outfit to match the flowers. She would play on the swings, walk to the lilies, bend over to smell them, and then laugh. We had the most fun time taking all those pictures. She loved to pose. I was in heaven being near her. This was the happiest time in my life.
I am now the sentimental old YODA tearing up and saying things to her this week like, “What you experienced, in this yard, do not forget.”
But back to the sight of these flowers just a few weeks ago. I sat my coffee mug down, went outside and sure enough, the Amaryllis Belladonna flowers had returned. I didn’t mention this before, but they had disappeared for…. 10,15 years. Maybe longer. Many times, these things do die for various reasons.
I would say year after year not seeing them, “Ok then, not this year.” I would detach myself and pretend I didn’t care. I had too many other problems, and old age ailments to concern myself with.
I read yesterday googling, these flowers can last decades. Whaat? Apparently, the bulbs can go deeper and create new bulb material; a miracle flower, and a survival mechanism. The rains from last year might have helped as well. I’ll never know.
Recently I ran across the photos I took of the scrapbook pages I made of that day with her, lilies and all. I showed them to Rebecca and also the photos I took of the NEW blooms that happened a couple of weeks ago. She was amazed the flowers returned. I told her I thought it was a sign of something special. She came over for dinner last night and we talked about some hard things in life. She got sentimental too. I brought her out to the back and asked if she was able to smell them. She could bend down easier than me. When she did smell them, I saw her at age two again (the time machine in my mind whirled and spun).
We both got teary. Life has such tremendous pain simultaneously with incredible beauty. I cried because I cherished her presence in the yard. As well as a myriad of other sadnesses. The sight of her and memories of her being raised in this house along with experiencing these flowers at the same time, and I feel blessed and also sad at the fleeting hands on the clock.
The story of The Time Machine I read as a kid by HG Wells, I have always loved (as said again like YODA) The movie from the 60s was a favorite of mine. I’ve seen it so many dozens of times. And when the remake in 2002 came out, I would cry repeatedly about how the story was even better than the original book. That is outstanding and so rare. Alan Young was in both films as well! So many fans loved that subtle tribute. The theme of “what if” would break my heart repeatedly. But the “what if” question led to a different future that had more meaning! It’s mind-billowingly good.
I will attach the scene with one of the most gorgeous soundtracks ever done in film.
In this scene, our traveler watches flowers bloom and die, Seasons change, fashions change, cities rise, and decades become centuries. It is the fabric of what we live in. For now. Time.
Here’s something interesting. Between the H.G.Wells book in 1895, the film in 1960, and again with a deeper story in 2002, if you google the phrase “the time machine discussions questions explanations” you get a litany of resources that can be used for interesting discussion.
The last question: “What three books would you take to help people in the future?”
