Queen Anne's Lace

on Monday and I can slop around in my grubbiest jeans and T-shirt, doing all the housekeeping I can’t do when customers are asking for my attention every few minutes. On Monday, there’s time to appreciate the old stone walls, the well-worn wooden floors, and the beamed ceilings that create a lovely setting for my herbal wares. I can dust the antique hutch and wooden shelves stocked with herbal vinegars, oils, jellies, and teas. I can rearrange the books in the bookshelf and tidy up the old pine cupboard that displays bath herbs, herbal soaps and shampoos, fragrances, and massage oils. I can restock the wooden rack that holds the bottles of extracts and tinctures and the large glass jars of dried culinary and medicinal herbs. I can rearrange the wreaths and swags on the walls and reorganize the buckets of fragrant potpourri in the corners, as well as tall stalks of dried sunflowers, baskets of dried Queen Anne’s lace, Silver King artemisia, yarrow, and tansy. And when the weather’s good, I can work outdoors in the herb gardens around the shop and replenish the shelves of potted herbs for sale—basil, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, chives—outside my front door.

No offense to my friends and customers: I enjoy you, and if I want to stay in the herb business, I need you. But if I were Queen of the World, it would be Monday all week long.

This particular August Monday was hot and steamy, so I worked outdoors for less than an hour, pulling weeds, trimming plants, and cutting some parsley, thyme, and rosemary for the tearoom kitchen. Then I cooled off with a little dusting and tidying up and planned to spend the rest of the morning peeking at my monthly income and expense reports, reviewing the tearoom menus that Ruby and Cass had proposed for the next couple of weeks, checking out a couple of things on the website, and looking over the handouts for September’s classes on wreath-making. Lovely things. Lovely Monday things.

With this in mind, I took my laptop to the counter and sat down on my stool. Khat—our shop Siamese and quite an autocratic creature—jumped up beside me, placing a proprietary paw on the computer keyboard and watching with interest while I pulled up the previous month’s financial data. I didn’t need a degree in economics to see that while July’s bottom line wasn’t quite red, it wasn’t quite as black as it should be. Sales had been a little slow, and on top of that, I had paid a couple of sizeable bills for the loft renovation, which happened because I decided that the empty space over our heads really ought to be generating some income. There was also a big bill for the veranda construction, which was rather a whim but has made an attractive difference in the street appearance of our shops.

I knew my building was old—well over a hundred years—but I didn’t know much about its history. It has been extensively remodeled, of course, but it was originally built, I’ve learned, as a house. When I started planning the loft project, I happened to look at a photograph from the early 1900s and discovered that there had once been a wood-frame veranda across the front. I loved that veranda at first sight. No matter how much it cost, I had to have it.

And when the job was done and the building looked very much the way it did when it was first built, the Pecan Springs Historical Society installed a handsome plaque beside the front door. It says The Duncan House, 1882—Duncan, the name of the family who originally built the house. Jessica Nelson, a reporter from Pecan Springs Enterprise, wrote an interesting article on its history, with photos. I’ve framed it, and it’s hanging on the wall behind my counter.

The loft is finished, too, and rented to Lori Lowry, a textile artist who uses it as a studio and teaching space. Which is a good deal for Ruby and me, for on top of the rental income, Lori’s students like to browse through our shops and stop for lunch in our tearoom. The local weavers’ guild is planning a show there in October, which will mean even more traffic.

I finished running the July numbers, frowned at them for a moment, then decided that if I didn’t count all those extra expenses (which are really an investment in the building), the bottom line didn’t look all that bad. Cheered up a little, I found the file of tearoom menus that Ruby and Cass had emailed me for posting on our website, and began to study them. Khat and I were considering the merits of grilled chicken with carrot and couscous salad when Ruby came through the door from her Crystal Cave, which is also closed on Mondays. At six-foot-something in yellow sandals, she was dressed for her day off in a sleeveless yellow top and lipstick-red shorts. Her hair is the color of fresh carrots, finely frizzed, and today, her eyes were green (a sure sign that she was wearing her green contacts—otherwise, they may be blue or brown).

She leaned against the counter. “A little voice woke me up this morning telling me that today would be a good day to clean out the storeroom upstairs. If you’re not doing anything, why don’t you give me a hand?”

Cleaning out that storeroom had been on our joint to-do list for some time, but it had never seemed very urgent. “I am doing something.” I pointed at the computer screen. “I’m doing menus. And then the website.”

“You can do menus and the website later.” Ruby stroked Khat’s tawny fur and he began to purr. “There’s not all that much stuff in that storeroom. It won’t take more than a couple of hours.”

“And then what?” I asked. “We don’t really need the space, do we?”

Khat arched his back under Ruby’s hand, turning up the volume on his rumbling purr. “Of course we do,” Ruby said.