The Bulb Hunter

Introduction: The Cabin

Introduction: The Cabin T he piece of land looks and feels like a winter wonderland at times, with a gray sky, geese flying overhead, and ice everywhere leading up to the little seven-acre lake. Other days it could be a tropical rain forest in monsoon season, very wet, but hot and sticky at the same time. Your feet will begin to sink into the sandy loam soil as you are attacked by mosquitoes. Such was the morning I awoke on my cot in the little red cabin by the lake, just into my new business or, rather, my new life. The temperature had already reached a balmy eighty-something and was bound to rise into the hundreds within hours. I lay there on a cot in the middle of the main room, scratching my bug bites from the night before, reminding myself to watch a few that seemed unusually large in case they turned black or blue or some other color telling me it was the bite of a poisonous spider. Still lying there, I thought to myself that if Kelly would fix the plumbing and shower, this cabin wouldn’t be half bad. Already I had taken his old shag carpet outside and burned it and moved the chair with mice living in it back to his sweet potato barn, which was just down the road. He doesn’t come down to the cabin much anymore, unless to play poker with his friends or take his kids fishing, so he lets me stay here. Who is Kelly? Kelly V. Hamrick is the sweet potato farmer who owns the cabin. He was the first person to lease me a small piece of land to farm. Later, when he found out I was sleeping in a small rented 4 chris wiesinger office in the nearby town, he offered this cabin. His grandfather had built it in the 1930s or 1940s, and at the time they used mules pulling implements to dig the dirt out for the lake next to the cabin. Both the cabin and lake were in a small valley in the heart of East Texas, a gently rolling land filled with pine trees and large old red oaks. This is a stark contrast to the flat prairies near Dallas, just two hours to the west. Everyone assumes my little red cabin and the bulb farm are on the same piece of land, but the farm is just down the road, because there are too many cows by the cabin, and too many hogs come to the lake, rooting up everything in their path. Hogs (depending on the number) could easily dig up and destroy an acre of bulbs in one evening. The farm is a five-minute drive from the cabin, but it’s not a bad work commute at all. That farm is home to all of the flower bulbs that I have collected from old homesites, abandoned lots, generous friends, historic places, roadsides, and many other places. Many flowers that have long been forgotten can be found in such locations. If you don’t know much about bulbs, you are probably most familiar with common varieties like tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths, but there are many more. Collecting , farming, and reselling these persistent horticulture treasures is precisely how I make my living. As you can imagine, my story is just as much about the flowers as it is about the adventures I have had looking for them. After working on the bulb farm, I would often come back to the cabin exhausted, covered in mud, and pull out the cot for my night’s sleep. On my radio I hear the traffic reports in the mornings from nearby cities. Usually there is an accident on one of the major highways to Dallas or Houston. I smile at times, because on my little farm-to-market road, there are no bottlenecks or fender benders to slow me down as I twist and turn these country roads. Tyler, about forty-five minutes south of my little town of Golden, Texas, is growing, but the roads next to Golden are quiet. Not a bad five-minute drive at all, except that I might be a little tired from a restless night on a cot in the cabin. Over my first few weeks of living in the little red cabin, the high temperatures began to drop from the hundreds to the eighties , and then within hours one day the...