Mulch Ado About Nothing

'Didn't I say Miss Winstead's garden and mine were very different?”

He sounded so proud of this, as if he had no sense of how much the rest of the class loved Miss Winstead's garden. Or any concept of how dreary his own was.

Stefan Eckert looked as if he were dreaming, his eyes half-closed with contentment. Even Ursula was impressed. 'This is what I'd like my yard to look like,' she said, quietly for once.

Dr. Eastman said, 'Fine work, Miss Winstead. How long has this garden been here?'

“Only five years come fall,' she replied. 'Not counting the two years I spent figuring out where I wanted the walls and walks and hedges.'

“That's the true measure of a real gardener,' Dr. Eastman said. 'The patience to wait, the planning ahead…'

“And the pure mean-spiritedness to rip up anything or anyone that doesn't work out,' Miss Winstead said.

Dr. Eastman paled, but didn't respond.

Eighteen

'Boy, that was scary,' Jane said as she hoisted? herself into Shelley's station wagon.

“Aren't you glad her remarks weren't aimed at us?' Shelley said, making a little shiver. 'If I'd been Dr. Eastman, I'd be installing a new security system right now. We better hurry home. I've got to take the girls to their cooking lesson. They're starting a couple days late, but they can catch up in the next round of classes. The teacher says she covers the same thing the first day of each session, but after that it's different recipes.'

“Does this mean they can take lessons the whole rest of the summer!' Jane exclaimed. 'And by the way, what did this first group of lessons cost? I need to reimburse you.'

“Only five bucks a day,' Shelley said. 'But we had to pay for the days they missed.”

After she'd pocketed Jane's check, Shelley abandoned her and gathered up their daughters and drove off to fetch the third girl, Katie's best friend, Jenny. Jane was glad she had a good excuse not to drive a summer car pool. As soon as Todd was old enough to drive, she'd be through with car pools, except for blind kids she drove to their special school once a week. She'd once filled in for one of the other women who'd broken her arm two years earlier and was getting time off in kind until she could drive again.

Enough of thinking about the distant future. The immediate future loomed.

She was going to have to do some work before the nursery guys delivered her 'instant' garden. She went out the back door to find the pooperscooper in the garage. She left it by the patio table and spent a full fifteen minutes nudging along the trash bin onto the patio. She'd always figured poop scooping was somehow inherently a male job. She'd always made Mike or Todd do it. But today neither of them was around. And even Katie was gone. Not that Katie would acknowledge such a request.

In her travels around the yard, she got the tip of the crutch stuck in a chipmunk hole, and put it down once on a fallen branch that rolled away under her. But she managed to stay upright while she quartered the grass. Max and Meow, fresh from hunting mice in the field behind her house, abandoned their favorite activity to hang around with her.

“You guys are good cats. You do your business somewhere else.”

Max tried to rub against her leg in appreciation,but she moved the crutch accidentally and he fled for his life.

She'd barely wrestled the trash bin back in the garage when a big truck pulled up in front of the house. The first guy out of the truck lowered a plank and dollied off a huge box. 'Where do you want this thing, lady?'

“Is it my fountain? In the middle of the yard, I thought.'

“It takes electricity. Have you got a really long cord?' he said.

She wondered if this was sarcasm or a really stupid idea that sounded all right to him.

“Oh… no, I don't. I guess it'll have to go on the patio. I think there's an outlet by the back door. I never thought about what makes a fountain work.”

The next guy off the truck was her son Mike. He was grinning. 'Show-off,' he said as he passed her with a pot of purple and white impatiens. 'Where does this go?”

Jane, as always, had made a list of what she'd ordered. She was an inveterate list maker. The kind of list maker who, when doing something not on the list, adds it so it can be crossed out. But her map of the yard was pretty awful. It had come out like a trapezoid instead of a rectangle.

“The big pot goes at the left end of the patio. The little one goes on the table. You do have the new umbrella for the table with you, right?”

She gave Mike the map and went to watch the man installing the fountain. It came in a lot of pieces that didn't look as if they'd all fit together. There was a pump (at least she assumed that was what it was) and tubing, clamps, and screws. The guy who was putting it together didn't even look at the directions. He must have done a lot of these before. He had a level and set the bottom basin in place, nudging small flat rocks under it until he was satisfied it was sitting properly. That was something she'd have never thought of.

This was the sort of thing, like scooping poop, that men were designed for. But she was glad once again that she had the cast and crutches as a good excuse for not being useful. Being a temporary invalid had a few benefits.

Apparently the man assembling the fountain hadn't noticed, however, and said, 'Bring me a hose. We'll fill her up and see how she works.' Why do men always consider appliances feminine? Jane wondered. The repairman she'd had in to fix the dishwasher two weeks ago did the same thing.

Jane stumbled to the reel where the hose was wound up, got drips on her sleeves while disconnecting the sprinkler, and dragged the hose to the patio, water dribbling down the side of her shorts and into her cast.

But it was worth the effort. Once the fountain starting circulating, it was delightful. The outlet at the top was concealed, and a slow, clear stream of water burbled out from it, trickling down into the first basin, filling it up and cascading into thesecond. Such a pleasant thing to hear water running so sweetly.

While she'd been watching the fountain installer and hauling around the hose, Mike and another young man had set out planters crammed with flowers where she'd indicated on the crummy map. She turned away from the fountain and was astonished at how nice the patio looked. So colorful and crowded with flowers in lovely pots. She had the awful feeling that she'd convince herself that she had to keep it all instead of renting it. It made the patio so inviting. She found herself looking at the table and thinking hard about getting some drinking glasses and little luncheon plates that would pick up the color of the flowers.

Show-off, she said to herself.

The workers were almost ready to leave in half an hour. When one of the other summer helpers who was aimlessly sweeping fallen petals off the patio asked how she had hurt herself, she told him she'd fallen off a runway while doing a fashion show. Mike overheard this and gouged her shoulder, laughing. He'd raided the box of doughnuts that Shelley had brought earlier and shared them with the other guys.

“Mom, this really does look nice. I'm glad you did this,' Mike told her. 'Are you going to spring for keeping the planters?”

Jane nodded and said, 'I'm afraid so. It's going to cost the earth, but it looks so nice. You'll mow the lawn tomorrow evening, won't you? I'd hate to lose someone out there.”

When the doughnuts were gone, and plants watered, the fountain guy gave Jane a wad of printed instructions about maintaining the fountain.

“Could I maybe put a few really tiny fishes in it?' she asked, thinking how the flash of goldfish would improve the looks of the fountain.

The man looked at her as if she'd lost her mind. 'Fishes get it dirty, have to be fed, and what would you do with them in the winter?”

He had a good point.

“Mom, try not to get carried away,' Mike warned. 'Remember what happened to you when you tried to cartwheel down the runway at that fashion show.”

The crew departed, strengthened by Jane's doughnuts. Only then did the cats reemerge from hiding in the field. They were roaming around cautiously, sniffing everything new to determine if these pots of stuff were friends or enemies. Jane levered herself down onto one of the patio chairs, leaned back, and looked around with an enormous smile. This wouldn't fool the real gardeners in the class, but it was so pretty she didn't care.