The Darling Dahlias and the Texas Star

It was the Odd Fellows who had booked the broken-down carnival, so the Ferris wheel problem was rightly their responsibility. But the Masonic Lodge was in charge of the festival and the fine finger of scorn was mostly pointed at them. It was months before they lived down the disgrace. Lizzy was determined that the Dahlias were going to do a better job. As the Dahlias’ president, she wasn’t about to let the club’s sterling reputation be besmirched by a few unexpected incidents. She was even more determined, because she knew that this would be the most exciting festival ever. This year, the festival was going to feature a special, never-been-done-before event that had the whole town buzzing.

Well. Now that we’ve come this far in our story, it’s time to pause for a few words about the Darling Dahlias. The club was founded in the mid-1920s by Mrs. Dahlia Blackstone, who died after wearing herself out in decades of community service and left her small white frame cottage at 302 Camellia Street to the town’s garden club. The club promptly renamed itself the Darling Dahlias in honor of this generous lady and committed itself to the beautification of Darling, one blossom at a time.

With the cottage, the Dahlias inherited almost an acre of once-beautiful flower gardens, as well as a half-acre vegetable garden in the adjoining lot. The yard in front of the cottage was planted with wisteria, azaleas, Mrs. Blackstone’s prize hydrangeas, and the old-fashioned wiegelas that came from her mother—an everyday-pretty Southern front yard that people admired as they drove down Camellia Street.

But it was the garden behind the house that people liked to talk about. It had once been truly spectacular, sweeping down a sloping, velvety green lawn toward a stately cucumber magnolia, a clump of woods, and a small, clear spring smothered in ferns, bog iris, and pitcher plants. The borders and beds were rich in roses and camellias, iris, stokesia, hibiscus, and dozens of different lilies—along with a rainbow of brightly colored annuals. It was so beautiful that it had been written up in the Selma Times-Journal, the Montgomery Advertiser, and in newspapers as far away as North Carolina.

In Mrs. Blackstone’s declining years, however, the garden had gotten the best of her. Left to fend for themselves, the plants grew rowdy and rumpled and dreadfully tousled—because gardens don’t just grow, of course; they require looking after. When the gardener isn’t around to pay the right kind of attention, plants have a tendency to wander off in whatever way they prefer, putting out a bud here and a branch there and dropping seeds (or extending roots) into their neighbors’ bed. Without the gardener, a garden quickly becomes a disorderly, unruly place.

As a result, when the Dahlias inherited Mrs. Blackstone’s garden, it was no longer as tidy as it was when Mrs. Blackstone could put on her garden gloves and get out there every day. The ladies had to arm themselves with rakes and hoes and trowels and clippers and set about restoring the necessary botanical order—which they did, although the job took the entire summer and most of the following autumn. Now, although there was always plenty of weeding, trimming, pruning, and even planting to be done, the Dahlias were pretty much ready to rest on their laurels as far as their “show” garden was concerned.

But then (as if they hadn’t already worked hard enough) Lizzy and the other club officers decided that it would be smart to use the vacant lot next to the clubhouse to grow vegetables. Times were hard, and people needed beans and okra and corn and tomatoes even more than they needed roses and camellias and gladiolas—although as Aunt Hetty Little liked to point out, a life without a few glads is a very sad life indeed. The Dahlias sold their vegetables, cheaply, at the Saturday farmers’ market on the square. And what they didn’t sell, they gave away to people who were hard up for cash—including some of their very own Dahlias who were having a tough time making ends meet.

So they hired old Mr. Norris and his bay gelding, Racer, to plow up Mrs. Blackstone’s empty lot, where they planted snap peas, corn, green beans, collards, Swiss chard, okra, Southern peas (purple hull was the hands-down favorite), tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash, cantaloupes, cucumbers, and sweet potatoes. This month, the garden was yielding its summer produce in great abundance. They would be selling it at their booth at the Watermelon Festival, with Aunt Hetty Little in charge. They planned to use the money to buy a pressure cooker and a case of Mason jars with new lids and rings. That way, they could can up the vegetables and give them to the Darling Family Food Pantry.

“How’s the work coming, Aunt Hetty?” Lizzy asked. “Do you need any extra help?”