The Sojourner by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The lilacs, growing bold too long, had over-reached themselves. In their eighteen years since Nellie had planted them, they had grown faster than Nat, now nearly as tall as his father. The mass of lavender pannicles made a hanging garden of its own, the fragrance almost too much of a sweetness, so that Ase Linden shook his head to free his nostrils. Slyly, through the years, the lilacs had sent out insidious suckers. Ase saw with surprise that the young shoots had not only encroached on a portion of the graveled driveway and on the smooth lawn, but were flourishing in a veritable thicket beyond the west fence, and into the field which he planned to plant this spring to buckwheat.

He brought a grubbing hoe and set to work to rout them out. They were tough, resistant. He felt the landsman's dislike for a growing thing that ran wild beyond control. A shower of morning dew sprayed over his face from the pendulous bloom he jostled. He took it for reproach, for there were many things that spread as carelessly but that delighted him; mint and water cress along the willow stream, wild strawberries, even buttercups and daisies. He loved flowers as Nellie did, and with an added awareness of the mystery of their haunts, the magic of snowdrop and blood-root and arbutus coming to blossom on the very heels of the retreating winter. Yet the lilacs had always disturbed him. He leaned on his hoe. Of course. He remembered now. He had awakened to the scent of Nellie's lilacs so long ago, when he had been frightened for her, giving birth to their first-born. It was he who was unreasonable and not the lilacs. When he was done with his hoeing, driveway, lawn and field clear of the suckers, he broke an armful of the flowers in something of apology. He divided them, took one bouquet to Nellie in the kitchen, and rapped on the door of his mother's room to present her with the other.