Those women who are married have removed their wedding rings, and these rings are strung like beads on a length of common kitchen string that is securely knotted to form a necklace. This necklace or wreath or garland, whatever you choose to call it, has been attached to a low branch of a particular blue beech tree-not at all a common tree in the region-situated on a knoll of land north of the overpass. All day long, while the women bury the blisterlilies in the ground, this ring of gold shines in the open air, forming an almost perfect parabolic curve. Birds dive at it, puzzled. Spiders creep on its ridged surfaces and attempt to wrap it with webs. Often they succeed. The younger unmarried girls, happening near it, glance shyly in its direction, imagining its compounded weight and how it would feel to slip such a necklace over their heads. Unthinkable; even the strongest breezes barely manage to stir it.

The midday meal is taken in the shade of a birch grove, a favored spot. Birches are clean, kindly trees, particularly at this time of year, early fall, with the leaves not quite ready to let go, but thinned down to a soft old chamoislike dryness. There’s plenty of room between the trees for the women to spread their blankets, and around the edges of these blankets they sit, talking, eating, with their legs tucked up under them. Everyone brings something, sandwiches, roasted chicken, raw vegetables and flasks of ice water or hot tea. The meal ends with dried apricots, eaten out of the hand like candy. Every year it is the youngest girls who take turns passing the apricots-Sally Bakey is served first-carrying them in a very old wooden bowl that has acquired a deep nutmeggy burnish over time. Some of the women reach up and stroke the slightly irregular sides of the bowl with their fingers, exclaiming over its durability and beauty.

The planting of the blisterlily continues until late afternoon. Between the red-stemmed alder bushes and Indian paintbrush, wild carrot, toadflax, spotted dock, milkweed, Michaelmas daisies, blue chickory, and stands of rare turtlehead lie thousands of newly nested blisterlily bulbs. A few good inches of black soil have been packed on top, enough to give protection through the winter months-seven months in all, for nothing will be seen of the blisterlily until the first week of May, perhaps later if the winter is particularly severe, perhaps not at all if things go badly.

The women, dispersing at the end of the day, resettle their rings on their fingers. Since morning they have been speaking in the old secret language of which, sadly, only eight verbs and some twenty nouns remain—but these they string together inventively, weaving a stratagem of potent suggestion overlain by a wily, votive grammar of sign and silence.