Grandpa’s Bells

Before the family sold my grandfather’s house, my mother and I dug up some of the flower bulbs that lined his long driveway.

We called them Grandpa’s bells. I have no idea where they came from and, until recently, couldn’t find them in a nursery or a plant catalogue.

These delicate little white bells would bob up from slender green stems, spreading enthusiastically along the narrow bed that stretched the length of my g r a n d f a t h e r ’ s driveway, a crowded cacophony of blossoms. They reminded me of pick-up sticks standing on end with little fairy bells teetering on their tips, or porcelain doll heads, and smelled slightly of garlic.

I know for a fact he never fed them. I don’t think he ever cultivated that hard-as-rock dirt. The soil in his half-acre vegetable garden in back was as loose as fine silk, thanks to his daily devotion to it. But the bells were some kind of afterthought or forgotten thought.

He must have watered them, but I’m really not sure. No sprinklers on timers back then. But despite the neglect, these babies were hardy. Give them full sun and they flourished.

Before escrow closed, we filled a grocery bag with the smelly little bulbs and carefully planted them in pots for safekeeping until we had a permanent

home to offer them.

That was nearly 30 years ago.

Today my grandfather’s bells are spreading all over my garden and my mother’s garden. Every February they pop up and we enjoy them for a few weeks until they recede again into the earth.

They sprout in Benicia, Calif. and Longmont, Colo., Marin County and Newbury Park. I’ve given Grandpa’s bells to friends and strangers, each time passing on the story of their origin and the home gardener who first instilled in me a sense of the earth— Sebastiano LoPresti, my grandfather.

I study the gardens around me all the time. One home a couple blocks from mine has a very noticeable garden. It’s simple but lovely and definitely well-tended. The woman and her husband are out there working in it all the time.

One day a couple of springs ago, I stopped to talk to the woman. I knew she was a kindred spirit, having seen her out there with her garden gloves and spade in hand on many Saturdays.

This one day I stopped to compliment her flowers in front. They were her mother’s, she told me. Her mother had passed on but the transplanted flowers continue to bloom.

I haven’t talked to that woman since but I still enjoy her garden each time I drive by it. And now it means more because, come spring, when I see those delicate blue blossoms, I remember the story of their origin. They are living on, reminders to a daughter about a mother gone. And they aren’t just touching her, as they were meant to do, they are touching me as well and who knows who else.

There’s a story in “Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul” that I particularly love, a real heartwrencher. It’s about a dying man who planted a flowerbed with hundreds of daffodil bulbs for his wife without her knowing it. He knew they would bloom after he was gone and return every year after that. When they popped out of the soft earth each year, it was as if he were speaking to her, embracing her.

I eventually found my grandfather’s bells listed in some obscure plant reference listings. To the best of my knowledge, they are Allium drummondii, commonly called “wild onion,” which explains the smell.

Some people consider them wildflowers, others weeds. I don’t think you can find them in a nursery. But, I’m happy to pass on a handful of bulbs to anyone who’s interested— along with the story that goes with them.