Three short stories
Ralph’s Garden
The Elm Street Ladies Tea and Wine Society
Riding With Ellie
By
Sandie Nygaard
Copyright 2009 Sandie Nygaard
Ralph’s Garden
“That chickweed’s going to be a problem. It’s gone to seed, and those seeds can lie dormant for years. Then all of a sudden, they’ll sprout again.”
Sara sighed and looked up at her neighbor, Ralph, who was leaning over the side fence. He wore a baseball cap with a trout emblem on the front. He’d hooked feathery flies into the crown, and the sun shining through them made a halo around Ralph’s head. He had found the hat and was so delighted at getting something for nothing that he wore it everywhere. So what if he wasn’t a fisherman.
Sara was on her hands and knees pulling weeds out of the garden. “I’ve been so busy at work lately, there just hasn’t been time for gardening,” she said.
Ralph leaned forward. “You kids should take the time. I remember twenty years ago when Carol and I first moved in. Our yard had problems, just like yours does now, but I got right out there and cleaned things up. Pulled up the chickweed right away. If you stay on top of it, you’re fine. But if you let it go, you’ll be fighting with it for years.”
Sara stood up and leaned backward to stretch her back. She’d heard this story yesterday when Ralph had been hanging over the fence watching her plant lettuce. “I’ve got to go in now,” she said. “See you later.” She turned to go, but Ralph had more advice.
“Wait! Don’t leave your weed pile lying there. They’ll just keep releasing seed. Now if I were you, I’d throw them right into the yard waste. Keeps the seeds from spreading. And what I do when I pull weeds is put them into a plastic tub. That way you don’t leave anything in the garden.”
She stooped over and gathered up the pile in her arms. “I’ve really got to go now.” She walked to the yard waste bin and dumped the unwanted plants. Ralph was watching her, and as she turned away she saw his mouth open to say something else. She ran for the house, racing to beat his words to the door.
“Don’t forget what I said about the chickweed,” he yelled.
She opened the door and rushed in.
She felt guilty running away from Ralph. He and his wife, Carol, had been gone beyond merely neighborly from the day Sara and her husband moved in next door. The first time she met Ralph, he was out hoeing in his garden, and he came to the fence to meet her. He started giving her advice right away. It might have irritated her in a different situation, but she and her husband had moved from a tiny apartment in downtown Seattle, and were intimidated by the yard in their new home in Cedarville. Ralph showed them how to prune their pear tree, so that the fruit would be large and succulent. He told Sara to divide her dahlias when she didn’t even know what a dahlia was, and he helped them plant a garden. Their yard didn’t match up to his, but Sara felt proud every time she made a salad entirely from vegetables she’d grown herself.
Then one day Ralph leaned over the fence and announced his retirement.
"Congratulations," said Sara. "Are you going to do some traveling?"
Ralph tilted his head to one side. "I don't really know what I'm going to do."
At first retirement didn't work out very well for Ralph. Yard work wasn’t enough to keep him busy, and he began to hang out at the fence. Sara watched as Carol tried to give him chores around the house, but he only caused trouble. One evening their kitchen window was open, and as Sara lounged in the backyard reading a book, she heard them talking.
“Carol, this recipe calls for ¼ cup of flour. How do you know that’s ¼ cup?”
“I’ve made Swiss steak for years. I know how much flour to put in.”
“But you didn’t measure it, you just threw some in.”
“Have I ever made bad Swiss steak?”
“Nope. You’re a great cook.”
There was silence. Sara smiled imagining Ralph putting his arms around Carol and giving her a hug from behind.
Then Ralph spoke again. “But honey, just think, it could be much better if you measured the ingredients.”
Silence again. Then, “Ralph, why don’t you go mow the lawn?”
“Did it yesterday.”
“Then go water the garden.”
“Did that this morning.”
“Ralph, just go outside.”
The door slammed, and a few seconds later Sara heard footsteps approaching the fence.
“Hi there. Whatcha reading?”
Her book was a romance with a revealing picture on the cover, and a plot too steamy to discuss with Ralph. She closed the book with a snap, and got up. “Just a book.” She ran for the door. “I’ve got to go now. See you later.”
“I see you’ve got some dandelion in your lawn,” he hollered. “Better take care of that soon. It will spread all over.”
“Bye Ralph,” she yelled, relieved to step into the quiet security of her house.
A few days later, she was back in her garden pulling weeds, this time into a plastic tub, when Carol walked up to the fence.
“I have a favor to ask. I was wondering if you could water our yard for us for a couple of weeks. Ralph and I are going to visit our daughter in California.”
“I’d be glad to.”
“We thought we’d drive down the coast, and go through the redwoods. Maybe take the grandkids to Disneyland.” Carol's eyes wandered to Sara's tub of weeds. She changed the subject abruptly. “Say, do you think I could borrow that tub?”
“Sure. Let me throw the weeds out first.”
“Oh, no. Leave them in. I’ll come back for it in just a minute. I think I’ll send Ralph to the store with a little shopping list first.”
“Go ahead and take it now.”
“No, no. Let me get rid of Ralph first.” She rushed off, but was soon back with an empty plastic tub in her hand. “You put your weeds in this, and I’ll take your full tub. When you fill this one up, give me a call, and I’ll come get it.”
“Carol, why do you want this stuff?”
“No time to talk. Got lots of work to do.”
Sara watched her trot back to her house with the weeds, wondering what she was up to.
As they had discussed, Sara took care of Ralph and Carol's yard while they were gone. It rained the first week, so she didn’t have to do anything. The second week, she went over to water, and noticed a lot of weeds growing in their garden, and dandelions in their lawn. Carol had told Sara not to bother pulling weeds, but she had given her a bottle of solution to spray on any dandelions that came up in the lawn.
“This is potent stuff,” she had said. “Spray it directly on the dandelion.”
Sara did as she instructed, and sprayed every dandelion with the weed killing solution.
By the third week, the weeds were getting thick in their garden. Sara didn’t know all their names, but the soft white blooms of chickweed that poked up between the rows of broccoli and lettuce were all too familiar to her.
The fourth week looked like a tragedy in the twenty year history of Ralph’s yard. His garden seemed to have been set aside for the sole purpose of cultivating chickweed, and his lawn was an exhibit featuring the life cycle of a dandelion. Sara's repeated treatments with the special solution hadn’t stopped them a bit.
The day that Carol and Ralph returned home, Sara was out in the yard barbequing skewers of chicken and vegetables for dinner. So far, all of her tomatoes, except one piece had fallen off the skewers and burned up in the briquettes.
She heard two car doors slam next door and then Ralph’s voice rose in astonishm
ent. “What in the Sam Hill happened to this yard?”
She grabbed her skewers and ran for the house, dropping the last tomato in the grass. “I’ve decided to eat inside,” she told her husband, as she shut the door behind her.
Later she saw Carol, and gave her back the bottle of weed killer. “It didn’t work very well,” she said.
“It worked wonderfully,” Carol said as she emptied the remaining contents into her flower bed.
“You’re going to kill your flowers!”
“No I won’t. This will make them grow faster.” She winked at Sara and walked away. Sara was too stunned to reply.
A few days later, Sara saw Ralph. She stood at the side fence, watching him on his hands and knees pulling weeds out of his garden. He wore a new hat with a castle on it and “Disneyland” written across the top.
“Looks like a lot of weeds grew while you were gone,” she said.
“In all my life, I’ve never seen anything like it,” he replied. “Before, when we’d go on vacation, we had a few weeds when we got back, but nothing like this.”
“I guess it’s a bad year for weeds.”
“I hope you don’t mind if I keep working here. I don’t have much time to stand around and talk anymore with all this yard work to do. A man can’t even put his feet up and enjoy retirement.” He grinned, and a gold filling in his tooth caught the sun and flashed in his smile.
Sara walked to the front yard and leaned over the fence to watch Carol as she sat on her front porch blowing on dandelion puffs like a little child. A plastic tub full of Sara's weeds were on the step next to her.
“How long do you think you can get away with this?”
I won’t have to do it much longer. I left a brochure about the master gardener training program on the coffee table. That ought to catch Ralph's eye.”
“Master gardener?”
“It’s a volunteer program through the university extension. They train people, then send them out to places like nurseries and community gardens, and they give little presentations and free gardening advice.”
“Sounds perfect for Ralph.”
“I think so, too. And I think that very soon, one way or another, Ralph will become one of them.” She stood up. “Well, now it’s time to send him to the store with a little shopping list. Then I can do the back yard.” She gave Sara a conspiratorial smile as she went into the house.
Sara stood looking at her tub of weeds sitting on the front porch. She knew that Ralph would say that they were a useless nuisance, but Sara was no longer willing to subscribe to such a narrow view. She'd read a book on natural remedies and learned that chickweed is not only edible, but is good for healing skin irritations. Invasive and hard to get rid of? Yes. Useless? No. Her tub was full of formerly unwanted plants, some in bloom, and some that had gone to seed. She had uprooted most of them, so most had the roots still attached. It was a tub flowing with the possibility of vigorous new life. Just like Ralph.
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