Vilhelm Moberg - The Settlers

— 3—

When the tall drifts round the cabin melted away in the spring, the landscape seemed empty and bare. Without their winter covering the log walls appeared in all their wretchedness. Now their home looked like a simple outhouse, a hay barn or a shed. There was nothing to indicate that this was a human habitation. A flower garden was what was needed.

Flowers cheered one up and were a decoration outside a home, and company for one when alone. When she was first married, Kristina had planted a flower bed against the wall of their house in Korpamoen — resedas, asters, sunflowers, larkspur, lavender, daisies, and other flowers.

This spring she would prepare a flower bed in front of her new home. She hoed a patch under the south window, and decided to try to get the same kind of flowers she had planted at home, if they were obtainable here.

Mr. Abbott, the Scottish storekeeper in Taylors Falls, had all kinds of seeds for sale. And shortly before Whitsuntide she had an opportunity to ride to Taylors Falls with Jonas Petter and Swedish Anna. Like her they were going to the Scotsman for their holiday purchases.

All three had finished their shopping and were sitting on the wagon, ready to return home, when Kristina remembered that she had forgotten the flower seeds. She jumped off and walked back to the store alone.

Mr. Abbott, behind the counter, greeted her with a lift of his white cap and adjusted the pencil behind his right ear; he was much more courteous to women than to men. The tall Scot was one of Ulrika’s rejected suitors. But a couple of years ago he had married the daughter of the German Fisher, and his wife had borne him a daughter who already managed to crawl about on the floor, both behind the counter and in front of it.

Kristina had become acquainted with him and was able to buy from him, even though they did not understand each other’s language, since he usually guessed what she wanted and would point to the shelves where his wares were displayed. But she did not know where he kept his seeds, nor did she know what they were called in English. Perhaps flowers had the same names in both languages. She tried the foreign tongue for the first time:

“I wanta planta blooms. . blommer . .”

The storekeeper listened without changing expression. He did not understand her and answered in words she in turn did not understand. In vain she looked around the shelves for seed bags. He must keep them in a drawer — but which one?

She grew embarrassed and annoyed at herself; was she unable to buy a few seeds for her own patch? She would take any kind, whatever he had, for it would be futile to stand here and ask for aster, lion-hearts, and other Swedish flowers she wanted. The question now was, could she get any seeds at all?

Then she saw a paper hanging from a shelf with a red flower painted on it. Relieved, she pointed to the paper and exclaimed:

“I wanta this! Blommer!

Mr. Abbotts face lighted up:

“Ah — you want seed, Mrs. Nelson?”

But she knew the meaning of the word “seed.” Karl Oskar had bought seed for their field, she did not want rye or barley.

“No! No! Not seed! I wanta blommer!

Mr. Abbott brought out a heap of small bags and spread them on the counter; he opened one of them to show her that it was seed. Well, perhaps it was the right kind; she could see the seeds with her own eyes, but the English printed on the bags she could not read; she must buy blindly.

Kristina fingered the small bags and chose five. As far as she could see, there was different printing on each one, so at least she would have five kinds of flowers.

She told Karl Oskar when she came home that she had blindly bought five kinds of flower seed for her patch under the window. She thought it would be amusing to see what she had picked; she hoped some of them would be the same varieties she had grown in Korpamoen.

Her new flower bed lay against the long front side of the house, on the south facing the sun; they would surely grow here. And she cleaned the earth well, picking away roots and weeds before she put the seed in the ground. She pushed it down in rows, one kind to each row, filled the holes with earth, evened out the bed, flattened it with a piece of board, so that it looked neat and orderly.

Flowers would grow near the house, they would be at the entrance, the place of honor. Flower beds belonged to a home. No one planted flowers in front of a barn, a stable, or a pigpen; a flower bed distinguished a home from animal shed.

Here her flowers would grow right under the window so they would catch her eye as soon as she looked out. And people would see from a distance that human beings lived in this cabin of rough timbers.

When Kristina finished her planting and had her flower bed in order she felt she had moved a little patch of ground from her homeland to the settlement at Ki-Chi-Saga.

— 4—

Minnesota’s hot season was approaching. Each day the sun felt warmer. The earth dried out, and Kristina watered her flower bed every evening. Flowers responded to the care given them, they grew better if they were watched and cared for, they appreciated water and attention. And flowers changed from one day to another; in the morning sun they proudly raised their heads, in fog and rain their heads were bent, sad and depressed; as with people, their appearance often changed.

Karl Oskar kept busy hoeing turf on the new-broken field; with a team he could have plowed and enlarged his field faster. Here lay the whole meadow with wild grass which was good only for hay. How much more wouldn’t it give him if it were cultivated! It had been lying here in fallow ever since the day of Creation. Now the tiller had arrived, and the time for the earth to give bread to people. At the house wall Kristina had planted her own little field. The flower bed would amuse her, and perhaps lessen her thoughts of longing. She needed something different to occupy her here, something to shatter her homesickness.

Each morning as Kristina rose she looked out at her flower bed: had they come up yet? The days went by but nothing was seen aboveground. It took time. . but she asked Karl Oskar what he thought; was it possible that Mr. Abbott had sold her old seeds that wouldn’t grow? He assured her that he had bought seed grain and seeds for rutabagas and carrots and parsnips and all had come up.

Then Karl Oskar too began to look at the flower bed. Each day he seemed more thoughtful. And one morning he said to his wife:

“Come and have a look at your claim, Kristina!”

In a headlong jump she was out of bed: small, awlsharp blades were shooting up from the earth. In the early sun they glittered like grain shoots. These were not tender flower stems; what she saw were shoots of grass.

“That’s what I thought!” she exclaimed, annoyed. “He gave me old seed — only weeds are coming up!”

“Weeds do not grow in rows,” said Karl Oskar calmly.

“In rows?” A new thought struck her. “You don’t mean I’ve planted. .?”

She bent down and looked closely. He was right: the grass grew in row after row — in five long rows.

“Exactly where I planted the seeds! Good Lord, what’s this. .?”

Karl Oskar pointed and explained: “Here at the edge grows timothy, the next row is clover. .”

“My Lord, how I’ve been fooled!”

Kristina had planted fodder grass instead of flowers in her garden bed. And when Karl Oskar mentioned clover she realized what had happened: when she asked for seeds in Mr. Abbott’s store she had pointed to a paper with a red flower — a clover blossom!

Neither asters nor resedas came up outside her window, neither daisies, nor sunflowers, neither larkspur nor lavender. Clover plants grew there, stands of timothy, and other grasses, rough, reddish, American fodder grass, unknown to her. But these plants she need not cultivate — they grew wild in abundance around the house, they stood yard-high everywhere, there were such quantities of them they could not save half.