Saturday morning, Alice came through the swinging door from the dining room to the kitchen, carrying a tray of dirty plates and bowls, which she set in the sink.
“The Burtons are almost finished. Mr. Burton would like another serving of the baked egg dish.”
Jane opened the warming oven and set a pan of scones inside. “I just took a fresh casserole out of the oven,” she told Alice. “It’s in the chafing dish. Do they want more scones?”
“I’ll ask when I refill their coffee,” Louise said. She picked up the pot and headed toward the dining room.
“What can I do?” Cynthia asked. “Put me to work. I can’t believe I slept in so late. Mother should have woken me when she got up.” She had just come downstairs from Louise’s third-floor room.
“Everything’s under control,” Jane said. “Have a cup of coffee and you can have some breakfast, if you’d like.”
Cynthia took a cup out of the cupboard. “Have you all eaten?” she asked as she poured a cup.
“Not yet. We’ll eat when the guests are finished. Remember, we have a full house this weekend.”
“I’ll wait for the rest of you. Again, I do hope I’m not putting you out.”
“That’ll never happen,” Alice shot over her shoulder as she carried a plate of hot egg casserole to the dining room.
“You always have a place here, no matter how many guests we have. The only problem with a full house is that you have to share a room with your mother,” Jane said. “I just wish you could stay longer than the weekend. You need a nice long break and we’d love your company.”
“Thanks, Aunt Jane. I wish I could stay too. I’ll be down for Thanksgiving, though, and I already put in for the whole week.”
“That’s wonderful! Does your mother know?”
“I told her last night. Let me start washing the dishes.” Cynthia pushed up the sleeves of her rugby shirt and stepped up to the sink. She turned on the hot water and began rinsing off some of the guests’ plates. “Did you go jogging this morning?”
“No, I’ll go this afternoon.”
“Mind if I come with you? I’m trying to stay in shape. I was doing really well, but we’ve had three book launches this month, and the hors d’oeuvres and canapés were fabulous. We had a chocolate fondue fountain at the last one. I nearly drowned myself in dark chocolate.”
Jane rolled her eyes. Cynthia, like her mother, was slender. She’d never carried an ounce of excess weight. “Something must be working. You should come down next month. They’re doing a 10K race for charity.”
“In Acorn Hill?”
“So I understand. I have a Web site address for the event, but I haven’t looked it up.”
“Are you going to run it?”
“I’m thinking about it. I need to do some training. My daily jogs are much shorter than that and a whole lot slower than I used to run.”
“But you’re so faithful with your exercise. You’ll sail right through it.”
“Maybe if I could wear my in-line skates, but I doubt they’d allow them.”
Cynthia laughed. “I can see you now, gliding circles around the other runners. What fun! You’ll have to get sponsors. Put me down. I’ll be your first.”
“So now you’re caught up on all the exciting details of my life, my editing and never-ending proposal reading,” said Cynthia, setting her napkin beside her fork. She leaned back. “That was delicious, Aunt Jane.”
“I know your life is more than work,” Louise said. “Last night you were telling me that your singles group at church attended the symphony.”
“Well yes, I guess I do get out now and then. I even went bowling last weekend.”
“Bowling and jogging—you have been busy,” Jane said.
“Oh, and I discovered a new author. I’m very excited about his work.” Cynthia gave them a dreamy smile. “Adrian and I have really hit it off,” she said.
“Really?” Jane said, perking up.
“You’d love him, Mother. He plays the piano quite well. I first met him at a recital that I attended with his mother. She is in my Bible study.” Cynthia laughed. “Adrian is nineteen and a child prodigy, although I suppose he’s really an adult now. His fantasy stories are magical. He has quite a future ahead of him and he loves mint-chocolate-chip ice cream.
“He’s fortunate to begin a career at such a young age,” Alice said.
Jane was a little disappointed. Cynthia was such an attractive young woman; Jane didn’t understand what was wrong with young men these days. Her niece’s boyfriends became her best friends, more like brothers. But Cynthia seemed content.
“Enough about me. What about you? What’s been happening around here?”
“Your mother’s been busy,” Alice said. “She’s also been very secretive.
Cynthia looked at her mother. “Are you working on a new concerto?”
“We’d know if that were the case,” Jane said. “We could hear her playing.”
“True. So what is it that you’re being secretive about?” she asked, giving her mother an inquisitive look.
“It’s quite a phenomenon,” Alice said. “Strangest thing I’ve ever seen your mother do. She’ll have to show you.”
“It’s outside,” Louise said.
“Now I am curious. May I see it now?”
“If you’d like.” Louise rose ceremoniously and carried her dishes to the sink.
“The dishes can wait. I’m coming too,” Jane said. “It’s not a secret anymore,” she told Cynthia. “It’s not the kind of thing you can hide for long. But your mother managed to keep it a secret for almost two months.”
The four of them trouped out the back door, and Louise led them across the lawn to the fenced-in vegetable garden. Even from the gate, Jane could see the huge, rounded leaves of the vine that dominated the far side of the garden. In the center of it, a large sheet was spread out, shading the vine. Normally, Louise and Alice spent very little time in the garden, other than to help pick the bountiful fruits of Jane’s labors. It seemed Jane had inherited their mother’s green thumb and her love of gardening. Neither Alice nor Louise had that interest, so they left the gardening to Jane, which suited her fine. She loved working outside, and the rewards brought her great joy.
The rest of the garden was a riot of color, with marigolds in dazzling red, orange and yellow; there were also nasturtiums in various pastel shades, surrounding full-headed broccoli, cauliflower, beet greens, carrot tops and cabbage as large as soccer balls. Jane watched Alice snap a bright red sweet pickle pepper off a loaded bush and rub it on her shirtsleeve. The pepper was clean. Jane didn’t use chemical pesticides around her vegetables. Alice popped the pepper in her mouth. Jane wasn’t surprised when her sister picked several more of the miniature specialty peppers that Jane grew. The crisp sweetness demanded another taste. She said a silent prayer, thanking the Lord for their bounty. She often talked to her plants and to the Lord while she worked. The verse about the plants and rocks praising the Lord was one of her favorites. Reciting it was like having a three-way conversation among her, the plants and God. And she believed the Lord heard, because she and her sisters had been feasting on the beans, carrots, assorted salad greens, radishes, cucumbers and tomatoes most of the summer.
They made their way through the rows of vegetables when suddenly, Louise stopped, held out her arms, hands extended, palms up, encompassing the back of the garden.
“Ta-dum!”
Cynthia looked dumbfounded. Jane could imagine what was going through her mind. Long, thick twisted vines with huge, wilting, splotchy leaves ran all over across the back half of the garden like some kind of dying serpent. Jane laughed.
“You’re reacting the same way we did, back when we first discovered your mother had invaded the garden with some sort of creatures that were attempting to take over the town,” Alice said. “As you can see, they’ve nearly succeeded.”
“It’s time to get out the weed whacker—or a cannon—and drive this thing back again,” Jane said, pointing to the pole beans. “Your monster has wrapped its tentacles around my beans.” She’d already harvested the summer bean crop, but the vines remained.
Cynthia looked where Jane was pointing. “Unbelievable. It looks like a giant stalk climbing the beanpole. Are you going to climb it and look for a treasure of gold?”
Louise gave her daughter a look somewhere between insult and injury. “Don’t talk that way in front of the plants. You’re supposed to talk nicely to them, aren’t you, Jane? You always talk to your plants and so did Mother.”
“You’re serious?” The incredulous look on Cynthia’s face made Jane laugh out loud. “This looks like something out of a Grimm’s fairy tale, Mother. It could be an illustration in one of my books. Only I thought it was supposed to be a beanstalk. Not a …” Cynthia looked back at the monster plant and the sheet that covered three big bumps in the middle of the vines. One of the bumps was peeking out from under a corner. It was large and yellow. “What are they? Squash? And how did they get so big?”
“They’re pumpkins. They’ve just started turning color. And they’ll grow much larger. These are Atlantic Giant Pumpkins. Let me show you.” Louise carefully pulled back the sheeting over one of them that protected them from pests and harsh weather.
“Me-ooow.” The inn’s black-and-gray striped tabby stole out from under the material, stretched and rolled over onto his back.
“Wendell, this is not here for your benefit,” Louise said, lifting the cat and setting him on the pathway.
Wendell gave a little flip of the black tip of his tail and sauntered off.
Several large rounded leaves shaded the pumpkin. The gigantic yellow vegetable was the shape of a somewhat flattened and rather irregular beach ball.
“Wow! It’s bigger than I thought. That’s a pumpkin?” Cynthia exclaimed. “It must weigh a ton.”
“Craig Tracy measured it not long ago. He estimated then that it weighed over seven hundred pounds. The others are smaller.” She looked at her plants and beamed. “Aren’t they amazing?”
“Amazing is certainly a fitting word,” Cynthia agreed. “What are you going to do with them? Have a pie festival? That’s enough pumpkin to make pies for the entire town. I’ll definitely expect pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, Aunt Jane.”
“Pie, cake, bread, cookies, soup, soufflé—I’ll be searching my cookbooks and the Internet for new creative ways to cook pumpkin,” Jane said. “At least there are only three pumpkins. We harvested a few smaller ones, and there were a lot of flowers. Your mother let me make fried squash blossoms out of them.”
“They were good,” Alice said. “I’d never had them before.”
“So my pumpkins are good for something,” Louise said, arching her eyebrows at her siblings. “You have to acknowledge, in front of my daughter, that I grew these by myself and that they’ve thrived under my care.”
“Thrived is hardly the word I’d use. They’re taking over the garden. We’re out here every day, cutting back these vines,” Jane explained to Cynthia. “If they weren’t finally starting to die off, they might have taken over Acorn Hill,” she teased.
Louise put her hands on her hips. “And you’re the master of exaggeration, Jane Howard. You both said I couldn’t grow anything. I’ve proved you wrong.”
Cynthia began to laugh. “Remember when I was little and we grew an avocado from a seed? We had this tall, spindly stick coming out of the seed with two leaves on it. It lived a long time, but it never grew beyond those leaves.”
“What about the sweet potato vine that grew up the sides of the kitchen window?” Alice said. “That was one of your science projects. It was very healthy, as I recall.”
“Father called it the sweet potato monster. I was so sad when it died.” Cynthia affected a downcast pout, her chin trembling as if she were about to cry.
“All right. Make fun of my gardening and my pumpkins if you must, but mark my words: I’m going to grow the largest pumpkin Acorn Hill has ever seen.”
“You mean you’re going to keep on nurturing it? When will it be ripe? I may have to make a special trip to see that.” Cynthia linked her arm through her mother’s arm. “You are extraordinary, Mother. In every way.”
Louise patted her daughter’s arm. “Thank you, sweetheart. It’s nice to be appreciated,” she said, giving her sisters a condescending look that only brought giggles from Jane and a chuckle from Alice. Louise sighed. “You see what I have to put up with?”
“How about if we help you trim back this monster?” Jane offered. “Will that make up for our teasing?”
“It might save the rest of the garden,” Alice said.
“True. I do have an ulterior motive,” Jane admitted. “Anyone want a pair of shears?”
Cynthia pushed up her sleeves. “I’ll help.”
“I’ll get them,” Alice offered, heading for the shed. She returned a moment later with three pairs of shears, four pairs of gardening gloves and two baskets. “I figure we should pick some vegetables while we’re out here.”
“The competition’s been good for Jane’s vegetables,” Louise said. “They’re not as large, but they’re certainly plentiful.”
“There’s nothing like fresh garden produce,” Cynthia said, slipping on a glove.
“We’ll send some home with you,” Jane said.
“Good. I was hoping you’d take the hint. I hate begging.” Cynthia grabbed a long runner from the pumpkin vine and snipped it off. Lifting it gingerly, she followed it to a head of cabbage and carefully untangled it.
“I’ll have to admit, I never really expected this much success,” Louise said. “Next year, I’ll need half of the garden, instead of just a corner.”
“Half? Not likely. Those vines are running over half the garden now,” Jane said, straightening up with a large stalk of broccoli in her hand. She wiggled it at Louise, then set it in a basket. “You’d get mighty sick of pumpkin, and our guests might never come back.”
“Hmm. That could be a problem.” She gave Jane a thoughtful frown, but the twinkle in her eyes gave away her mirth. The garden would be safe.