For those seeking the cosmopolitan touch, there is a Tunisian restaurant started up by a guy from Paramus, New Jersey, that used to be rated nationally as a four-star undiscovered gem. It had suffered from its brief fling with fame, and expanded too quickly, allowing quantity to trump quality. Now, it catered primarily to a lunch crowd of businesspeople for whom pretty decent North African fare was plenty good enough.
Because they had some pride in their community, Nan and George had been pleasantly surprised to find, as they followed the contestants map supplied by Burdick’s, so many lawn signs sprouting from properties they ordinarily would not have suspected to be in the running for any kind of landscaping recognition at all. They also felt somewhat threatened and deflated to discover that many of these gardens, often fronting the streets, were pretty darned good. Many were on streets seldom traveled by the Fremonts.
Then there was the Billings Lake area. What they found there was a revelation that gave them new hope. Many of the yards were too gaudy and pretentious. Others had not been properly cared for, and were showing signs of drought damage. Some were quite lovely and tasteful, but others were so often garish quilts of mismatched plants and flowers. Repeated visitation revealed that many used hired labor, which disqualified them right away, and would probably double disqualify them if the hired labor was of the illegal sort.
As they branched out into virgin territory, a new world of Livia yard horticulture opened up to them. In fact, they found threats galore to what they had always assumed was their uncontested place among Livia’s landscaping elite.
The curving cul-de-sacs of south-central Livia, known only to them because Ellis’s best kindergarten friend lived on one of them, were a special discovery. Here were at least eight lush gardens swimming in moisture. Black soaker hoses snaked everywhere, their mist turning the landscapes into mysterious, wet-climed fog gardens. All manner of exotic annuals and perennials sprouted from these gardens. Even Nan was at a loss to identify many of them. After two such scouting missions, they decided to bring along a digital camera, so they could surreptitiously take their pictures, return home, plug the camera into their computer, and search their gardening books for the appropriate IDs.
It was easy enough to spot the roses. In one garden, four different varieties swallowed up six giant trellises at the front and side of the house. God knows what was in the back, because, at this point, their scouting expedition scruples did not allow Nan and George to trespass on private property. That left them cursing the absence of alleys, which would have allowed them access to what was really going on, and frustrated them with the knowledge that what they were seeing was probably only the tip of the blossom. The rose house they were able to dismiss as “too one-dimensional,” though it certainly made a vivid impression. With any luck, the Fremonts figured, those roses would have shot their wad by the time of the contest.
It was harder to ignore the house on Waveland Circle, a long, hidden-away cul-de-sac perched on the bluffs overlooking the Big Turkey River Valley. Due to the way the houses on the cul-de-sac were constructed on their plats, Nan and George were able to get a good look at the backyards as they followed the circumference of the cul-de-sac circle. What they saw stunned them. Here was the sort of garden that made theirs look like an HO scale model by comparison. There were at least four varieties of phlox, which would likely burst out just in time for the judges’ visit. Lots of peonies, but those would probably be past their prime by then. There were lilies and amaryllis everywhere throwing out beautiful blooms. Would they still be blooming at contest time? Nan wasn’t sure. Her own lilies, she knew, would not be, darn them!
Spreading clematis splotched an aging, weathered-gray section of fence with scores of violet-and-white blooms and, right next to it, a huge hydrangea with green flowers would go white in about two weeks. Perfect timing, drat it all! Someone had shown the presence of mind to plant lots of big annuals, which would bloom all summer: sunflowers, which hadn’t come out yet, and might not by the time of the contest; lovelies-bleeding, larkspur, and mallow. The ornamental grasses, though, were really what hit Nan because they were so well placed, breaking up the annuals and perennials: Scottish tufted hair grass, huge pampas grass, switchgrass, and purple fountain grass.
Most of those names George and Nan wouldn’t even know until they were able to blow their pictures up on their computer and match them with photographs in their four illustrated gardening books.
“Oh, and of course, they have their token roses,” harrumphed Nan as she aimed her camera at an eight-foot-tall curved trellis smothered in the ruby red and pink of scores of Don Juan and Jasmina roses in full bloom. “Wow!”
“I don’t know; that yard looks awfully busy to me. There’s too much going on there. There’s no theme.”
“Are you kidding! It’s spectacular! But, yes, George, if simplicity is considered the top virtue of a yard by our judges, then we can rest easy; these guys will not win. Somehow, though, I think spectacular might win some points. And we’re only seeing about half to two-thirds of the backyard. Let’s move around the curve here.”
They followed the curve around to the other side of the driveway, but the house blocked the view of the backyard from that angle. It was at this point they noticed that a man and woman were watching them through the house’s front picture window. They waved and the Fremonts waved back. Then, they moved away from the window.
“Better scoot before we have to answer some pointed questions,” Nan said.
They got in the car just as the man came out the front door. He watched them impassively as they drove off.
“I hope he didn’t get our license plate number,” said George, who had burned some rubber as he shot out of the cul-de-sac.
“Now, why would he want to do that?” said Nan, who was busily scrolling through the photos she had taken on the viewfinder screen. “He was probably going to ask us what we were doing, then invite us into the backyard when we told him. No big deal.”
“Can’t take too many chances,” George said.
As they pulled into their driveway, they were surprised to see a woman dressed in a burnoosey-looking thing and carrying a camera scurry across their yard, then run down the street, get into a white sedan, and peel out with a squeal of tires and engine.
“Loony!” George said. “People just go goddamn loco about some things. What do we have to do, fence in the yard? Keep that car in mind in case you see it prowling around again.”
“No problem. I bet only fifty cars matching that description come by here every day.”
13
Revenge of the Spurned Gardener
Dr. Sproot didn’t appreciate her coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend mocking her. It wasn’t so much that she could communicate with her flowers as it was knowing when she was being made a fool of, whether by animal, vegetable, or mineral.
The way they were acting! Just look at them! Going to pot after all she had done for them. Why, it was mutiny, that’s what it was! Clearly, today, every bloody flower in her gardens was treating her like the world’s biggest gardening sap. How could that be?
Here were the coreopsis, all curled up and tinged with brown. And the salvia! Wilted! The hollyhocks were getting duller by the hour. The dahlias looked lackadaisical, uninspired, washed-out.
And as for the wretched yuccas? Why, she had pricked her finger on one of their pointed tips, then sliced her thumb on the edge of another. Dr. Sproot dropped her watering can and pulled back from her flowers in disgust mingled with fear.
“What on God’s green earth is happening here?” she muttered. “Am I not the master of my own gardens? Is this the payment I receive for such hard work?”
She inspected every shoot, every leaf, every stem, every blossom, armed with magnifying glass, tweezers at the ready to crush every pest that might turn up, but found nothing. No bugs. None of the usual signs of blight. Nothing indicating the damage resulting from too much sun or too little.
She took soil sa
mples and did her own chemical analyses. Every test from every section of her gardens showed her topsoil to be in flawless, nutrient-rich condition. She read and reread the instructions on every bag of specially-prepared dirt and fertilizer she had applied and found she had followed them to the letter.
At her wit’s end to figure out what was happening, Dr. Sproot turned to Cleon Broadmind, an old acquaintance from childhood with whom she had occasionally exchanged Christmas cards and a few brief telephone exchanges. Cleon had gotten various degrees in horticulture and now served as one of the experts-in-residence at the state university extension service. Cleon, who had had a crush on Dr. Sproot during high school, and who was now divorced, eagerly agreed to personally inspect Dr. Sproot’s gardens, especially upon learning that she was widowed.
When he arrived the next day, he noticed that Dr. Sproot looked much more drawn and haggard in the face than he had expected. But she still had that trim shape, and so tall! Had she grown since he last saw her? Amazonian! Cleon noted with delight the continued presence of pronounced curves in the hips and the nice way Dr. Sproot filled out her form-fitting jeans.
“Gosh, you look great, Phyllis,” he gushed, taking her limp, cold hand into his own and squeezing it.
“I didn’t call you to exchange compliments,” said Dr. Sproot, yanking her hand out of his clutches. “And I did not intend it to be a social visit. I called you to give me your professional opinion about what the Sam Hill is happening to my gardens.”
Not utterly immune to the charms of the opposite sex, Dr. Sproot nevertheless could not find anything to admire in this particular specimen. He was overweight, borderline obese, with a good-sized gut lapping well over his belt. He was bald. He had a bulbous, veiny nose that was approaching uncomfortably close to hers. Cleon had obviously gone to pot over the intervening forty-five years or so since she had last had day-to-day contact with him. Even so, there had never been that much raw material to work with. In high school, he was a stubby little greaseball, a moonstruck wallflower who was always annoying her with weird notes and longing gazes. Besides, he was four inches shorter than she was, an unacceptable differential for her in any prospective beau. She eventually had her boyfriend—a basketball player named Johnny—slap him around, and generally scare the crap out of him, and that ended that.
“Come outside,” she said. “And please do address me as Doc-tor Sproot, as that is my official title.”
“Okay,” said Cleon with an ingratiating smile. “Dr. Sproot it is. I’m a doctor, too, you know.”
Same old stuck-up bitch, Cleon thought. But not bad looking in a withered sort of way. Figure’s still there, and that’s what matters.
Walking around in the yard, Cleon found his old affections, half-buried and semi-forgotten for all those years, bubbling up again. It was the way she walked—sort of slinky-like—and the way she talked in that hard, uncompromising way that screamed out dominance. She looked so strong in the arms and legs and buttocks. Pictures of Dr. Sproot as no one had ever seen her before started forming in Cleon’s tortured psyche. He saw her as a gaunt, powerful, primitive warrior who tied him to a rack with prickly, skin-gouging rope and lovingly caressed his ample, naked back with a few choice strokes of the cat-o’-nine-tails while singing out, “Does it hurt Daddy to do that?”
Put her in a studded, sleeveless leather jacket and spiked, crackling leather gloves. Give her a pair of stiletto-heeled stomping boots she could pull all the way up to the crotch, and a chastity belt made of iron with a skull and crossbones on it that he would burst blood vessels trying to rip open. Then, you’ve got the perfect woman. The woman of his wildest dreams. And now, a very available woman after all these years of secret subliminal yearnings.
“Well?”
“Well?”
“What do you make of all this?” At this point, lost in his reverie of Dr. Sproot as his personal dominatrix, Cleon could only gaze disinterestedly at all the vegetative carnage around him.
“Looks bad,” he said.
“I KNOW it looks bad, Cleon. WHY does it look bad?”
After asking some perfunctory questions of Dr. Sproot, and satisfying himself she had done all the things she should do to create a healthy home for her flowers, Cleon found he was at a complete loss to explain anything except his passion for her, which he would be more than willing to expound on for the rest of his life.
“Do you love your gardens?” he asked.
“Do I what?”
“Do you love them? You must coddle them. Tell them how much you care for them. Play soft music to them. Caress them. Stroke them. Stroke them again. And again. Let them know you’re always there to keep them secure and safe.”
Dr. Sproot was aghast.
“I certainly don’t do anything of the sort!” she snorted. “If I had wanted to oversee a bunch of brats, I would have had children. And I decided not to have children because I hate the idea of having obnoxious little persons running around pestering me with their fickle affections, their yammering conversation, and their tantrums. Isn’t it enough that I do what’s necessary for any garden to flourish and apply the latest in scientific methods and my own inspiration to their health and well-being?”
“Well, then, have you tried screaming at them and humiliating them? How about whipping them, or slicing their buds just enough to cause endurable pain. You could grab them in hand and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze them until they think you’re going to crush the very life out of them. But then you stop. It’s the kind of treatment that can create excitement in any organism, present company not excepted.
“And maybe if you could dress in a certain way when you care for them that could perk things up a bit. Say, going topless, or wearing a loose-fitting, wiggly bra made from chain links and old hubcaps.”
“What?” screeched Dr. Sproot, raising her arm toward the salivating Cleon as if to ward off an expected blow. “How dare you unleash your putrid perversions on me! Out! Out! Out, you quack!”
With that, Cleon scuttled across the yard toward the fence and fumbled with the latch on the gate, half hoping that Dr. Sproot would follow and whale the living daylights out of him. Instead, she just stood there and glared as he slunk through the gate to his car, reveling in the rather modest helping of humiliation she had dished out.
Dr. Sproot’s shame and despair over her gardens were such that she turned what few friends she had away from her door. Same for those craven acolytes accustomed to turning to her for advice or inspiration.
Finally, one day, her gardens looking more than ever like brittle, rusted, and corroded metal, it dawned on her.
“Edith Merton!”
That could be the only explanation. The black arts of Edith Merton. Dr. Sproot shook her head in disbelief. After all, Dr. Sproot was a woman of science who had gotten a B- in biology and B in chemistry in high school. She subscribed to The Homebound Scientist, which she now made a mental note she would have to renew because the last issue came Thursday. Every gardening move she made was testament to what you can see, touch, and smell, and apply chemicals to. But what else could there be to explain all this? The flowers were perking up now, but only to laugh at her, pointing their wretched, decomposing blooms directly at her to highlight the object of their scorn.
Good God! thought Dr. Sproot, something’s turning my gardens into mobs of horrid little people.
“This is Edith Merton’s doing,” she whispered.
She hardly dared admit it to herself, but what other explanation was there? Edith Merton casting her spells. Edith Merton, gardening witch!
On the surface, Edith Merton was a middle-aged businesswoman, who, with her husband, Felix, owned Mertons’ Liquors on 34th Avenue and Mertons’ TV and Appliance Mart on Jursfeld Street. Mostly, she kept the books in the store offices and left all the customer dealings to Felix and his sales and repair staff. From all accounts, she dressed normally, and was a dues-paying member of the Livia Business Fellowship. She walked her springer spaniel punctually a
t six ten p.m. every day, rain or shine. She had no tattoos or body piercings. As far as people could tell, she never even dyed her hair.
Edith Merton cultivated a modest little garden that gave her great pride, but which, otherwise, could not be taken seriously.
She had some snapdragons, which she interspersed with Dusty Miller and milkweed. A few morning glories. A smattering of ornamental grasses. All contained within one eight-foot-by-ten-foot patch of front yard bordered by a wall of decaying railroad timbers. For years, her flowers were perpetually drooping underperformers, sadly under-watered because, when you kept the books for a couple of small businesses, who had time for plant care?
It was last year that things changed. Something had supercharged her garden into healthy, brilliant vivacity. The morning glories and snapdragons were glorious. The dusty miller had grown to gigantic size, threatening to overreach the modest gardening plot. The milkweed was lustrous, and the ornamental grasses had truly become living ornaments.
Edith’s newfound talents as a gardener had led her to seek membership in Livia’s most prestigious gardening club, the Rose Maidens. It was the club for which Dr. Sproot served as secretary/treasurer and president emeritus.
The officers of the club had scoffed at the very notion of admitting Edith Merton to their hallowed ranks. Despite her recent successes, she didn’t come close to meeting even their minimum requirements, and she had no gardening pedigree. Besides, their president, Dawn Fisher, hated snapdragons with a zeal that the members were led to believe was connected to some traumatic episode of her childhood. Some said that Dawn had once pinched a snapdragon to get that dragon effect. The effect she got was a bee popping out of the flower and stinging her on the upper lip, which had swollen to three times its normal size.
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