Henderson Luelling, horticulturist,
\njourneyed west in 1846
\nfrom Sioux City
\nwith his pretty daughters
\nEliza and Annabel,
\nand three covered wagons,
\ntwo full of budding saplings\u2014
\napple, cherry, pear, plum, and black walnut\u2014
\nplanted in rich Iowan dirt,
\ntheir branches waving like hands
\nthrough holes cut in the canvas covering:
\na rolling orchard, wondrous to see.<\/p>\n
Luelling, a pious and industrious man,
\nprayed over his little trees at night
\nand watered them by day
\nwith a porcelain amphora.
\nHis girls tended to the teams of oxen
\nand cooked porridge and bacon over fires
\nfueled by discs of dried buffalo dung.<\/p>\n
Forty miles from Fort Bridger In the desert called Craters of the Moon, Henderson Luelling, orchardist, pioneer, Henderson Luelling, horticulturist, journeyed west in 1846 from Sioux City with his pretty daughters Eliza and Annabel, and three covered wagons, two full of budding saplings\u2014 apple, cherry, pear, plum, and black walnut\u2014 planted in rich Iowan dirt, their branches waving like hands through holes cut in the canvas covering: a rolling orchard, wondrous to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[10],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6Jypy-darlings","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10275,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5050\/revisions\/10275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nan axle broke\u2014black soil
\nspilled onto the hard-packed trail,
\nexposed the naked, reaching roots.
\nThe girls gathered as much of the dirt
\nas they could in their skirts. Two wagons
\nnow. A mouthful of water that tasted of iron.
\nRawboned rabbits cooked on spits. At night
\nthey could hear their father
\nmurmuring to his trees, my darlings\u2014<\/em><\/p>\n
\ntheir eyes grew feverbright with cholera.
\nThe night Annabel died, Eliza dreamed
\nshe birthed a pile of plums,
\nthat they slid out of her slick
\nand purple as bruises.<\/p>\n
\nthe first to plant grapes in Oregon,
\nburied his daughter beside the trail
\nin the gray sand of the Snake River.
\nBad soil<\/em>, he said, wiping grit from his hands,
\nstill looking west
\nwhere the fertile green Grande Ronde valley
\nlay just beyond the mountains.<\/p>\nJenny Lederer<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"