The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree

“It was beautiful,” Ophelia agreed. “Acres of lawn, and all those azaleas and weeping willows and oaks hung with Spanish moss.”


“They had plenty of slaves to keep it that way,” Bessie said, matter-of-factly. “You can’t have a garden like that now—not unless you have more money than you know what to do with, or a dozen friends who will work for nothing.”

“Or a dozen garden club members,” Mildred put in dryly, “who work for the love of gardening—and the chance to take home a few passalong plants for their own garden. Like those spider lilies over there. They really need to be dug and divided.” She paused. “Didn’t you tell us that it was Dahlia Blackstone’s mother who designed the original garden?”

“I didn’t know that,” Ophelia said. “Must’ve been a long time ago. Mrs. Blackstone was in her eighties when she died, wasn’t she?”

“Eighty-two,” Bessie replied. “Dahlia’s mother—Cornelia, her name was—came here as a young bride in the 1840s, back when the place was new-built. She put in the gardens before the War, Dahlia told me, before Mr. Lincoln freed the slaves. Which was long before the mansion burned.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard the real truth of that story,” Ophelia said. “Just a lot of rumors. Did the Union troops torch the house?” After the fighting was over, soldiers had looted and nearly destroyed the town of Claiborne, not far away on the Alabama River, then had made their way to Darling, wreaking havoc as they went.

“Nobody seems to know just what happened,” Bessie said. “Dahlia’s father, Colonel Cartwright, was away in Virginia, where he had been fighting alongside General Lee. He didn’t get home until several months after the War ended, and by that time, his wife was dead and the house was gone.”

“Such a sad thing,” Mildred said mournfully. “To fight all that time, and come home and find nothing left”

“I’m afraid there were plenty of other situations just like this one,” Bessie said. “The Cartwright place was the largest house in the area, and Dahlia—who was only thirteen or fourteen when the War broke out—said that her mother was terrified that the place would be ransacked and they would all be murdered. Mrs. Cartwright had her jewelry and the family’s valuables hidden, in an effort to keep them from being stolen.”

“The same thing happened in my family,” Ophelia put in reminiscently. “My grandmother was living in Atlanta. When she heard that Sherman and his Yankee rabble were coming, she pulled a brick out of the fireplace and put her jewelry behind it. The soldiers searched the house, but they didn’t find a thing.”

Bessie was rueful. “I’m afraid it didn’t turn out that well in this case. Dahlia never liked to talk about it, or about the ghost, either. In fact, she thought the ghost was a lot of nonsense. But she did tell me once that the man who was responsible for hiding the family treasure had been killed. Her mother—she had consumption—was dead as well. They searched and searched, but the family’s valuables never turned up. Whether they were lost or stolen—nobody knows. Whatever the truth, it’s hidden in the mists of time.”

“And the mansion?” Ophelia asked. “How did it burn?”

“When Cornelia got sick, Dahlia was sent to Mobile to stay with her grandmother. She didn’t come back until her father returned from Virginia. By that time, the place had burned to the ground. Could’ve been Union looters, although they didn’t burn anything else in Darling. Maybe it was an accident. Or—” Bessie shrugged. “Dahlia said she never knew for sure and never really wanted to find out. She didn’t like to think back on those days. She had lost too much. It was too painful to remember.”

“We think we have it hard now,” Mildred said seriously, “and we do, with people losing their money and their jobs. But it was a lot worse back then. The War changed everything. You wonder how people managed to survive.”

“A lot of them didn’t,” Ophelia said. “Unless you had a garden, you and your kids could starve.” Walking slowly, they had reached the edge of the grassy lawn. “Is that the spring down there?” The area was green and thick with clumps of green ferns and shrubby bushes and shaded by low-hanging branches.

“This is it,” Bessie said ruefully. “As I said, if we’re going to plant a bog garden here, we’ve got a lot of work to do. It’s a jungle.” There were a number of square-cut stones scattered randomly among the underbrush. “I wonder if there was a garden area here before. Those stones—looks like they might have come from a wall. Maybe a seating area, too?”