8
Transformation
George and Nan leaned over a large sheet of vellum drafting paper spread out on the backyard patio table. Shirelle’s design, drawn to scale and displaying the accurate contours of the land, was punctuated with measurements, dimensions, and comments. It laid out for them a front yard the sheer majesty of which garden-by-the-gut naturals such as George and Nan could never have conceived. They silently studied the plan, their eyes open wide and darting across the paper, then narrowing into thin slits as they bowed their heads closer to the paper to try to make out Shirelle’s handwriting and draftsman-like renderings of shrubs, bushes, and flowers.
“I can tell you what things are if you’re having a hard time reading my notations,” said Shirelle. She watched nervously as the Fremonts’ expressions veered dangerously toward the quizzical.
What if they hated her plan? She would just die! But if they loved it? A hint of a smile creased Nan’s face. Shirelle’s heart leaped. Then, Her Munificence, the Grand Goddess of Gardening, spoke.
“My goodness, Shirelle, you’ve even got the contour lines on here,” she said. “And there they are bunched together to show our slope. Wow!” Shirelle flushed with pride.
“For my floriculture degree, I had to take courses in architectural drawing and basic cartography,” she said, trying to sound secure in her knowledge without being boastful. “If you don’t have the scale right, or the topography, or the correct location of things, you can really mess up your design, and it won’t turn out right.”
“Mmm-hmm,” said Nan, who went back to her silent study of Shirelle’s drawing. What does that “mmm-hmm” mean? wondered Shirelle. It sounded kind of noncommittal. She wondered if Nan had just brought up the contour lines to disguise her intense dislike of everything else. Damning with faint praise. Shirelle could feel her face drooping.
“Shirelle,” said Nan. “This is . . . this is . . . amazing.”
What was that?
“Why, Shirelle, I don’t know what to say. My goodness, this is just amazing, isn’t it, George?” George nodded and smiled at Shirelle. “We had been having a tough time figuring out what to do in the front yard, and you’ve just solved our problem. It’s beautiful, Shirelle. Just beautiful. How can we thank you?”
Oh, joy! thought Shirelle. Oh, rapture. I will never, ever, ever have a moment like this. I must capture it, revel in it, take a mental snapshot of this so it will live on forever.
“I told you it was good, didn’t I?” said Mary.
“Yes, dear,” Nan said. “But I didn’t know it was going to be this good.”
Shirelle had taken a gamble by introducing some flowers and patterns the Fremonts had not used in their backyard gardens. While those gardens were truly magnificent, why just clone them for the front yard? Shirelle thought the Fremonts might want to shift gears a little.
“I recognize a couple of names here,” said George. “A bunch of others I don’t. We’ve never planted these flowers. We’ll want to see photos, of course.”
“No problem, Mr. Fremont; got them right here on my laptop.”
“These are all sun worshippers, right, Shirelle?” asked Nan. “That’s mighty sunny territory out there, not a mix like the backyard.”
“You can almost see all these flowers wearing sunglasses and putting on the sunscreen; that’s how much they like sun,” said Shirelle, with a giggle.
“When do we start?”
“We can go to Burdick’s this afternoon,” Mary said. “We’ll have to order what they don’t have.”
“Knowing Burdick’s, I’m not worried,” Shirelle said. “It’s got to be the most well-supplied gardening store in the state, maybe even the region.”
“Okay,” George said. “Get to it. Give me the bill when you get back and I’ll reimburse you. . . . Uh, how much do you think all this will cost?”
Work on the new front yard gardens began in earnest the next day, with multiple trips to Burdick’s and a pop-up thunderstorm having eaten up most of the afternoon.
What Shirelle had mapped out for the Fremonts was nothing short of regal.
She had an entire bed, eighteen feet by six feet, given over to roses. The backyard certainly had its roses, but they were of the climbing variety, smothering two big whitewashed trellises. The front yard bed would have stand-alone hybrid tea roses, lined up at the top of the slope and picked especially for their varied and vivid colors. And Shirelle had some real show-offs in mind. There’d be buttery-white Full Sail roses, lavender Blue Girls, dreamy red Chrysler Imperials, and apricot Bronze Stars.
“I’m still looking for one or two more,” said Shirelle during a backyard patio break from the soil preparation work. “But this will give you quite a showcase for folks driving by on Sumac or walking along the lake. The backyard was kind of hidden away, you know. A hidden gem. You had to come up into the yard to really see what was going on. Everybody will see this. With hybrid teas, you’ll have to make sure to protect them from the cold. They’re finicky, too. We can talk about that more before I leave, around Labor Day.”
“Oh, Shirelle, it’s so hard to think about you leaving. Isn’t it, George?” George nodded a bit too noncommittally for Nan’s taste. “You’ve been so helpful to us, and I almost think of you as one of the family here. You’re almost like a sister to Mary.”
“Mom!” cried Mary. Shirelle blushed.
“Well, Miss Mary, you’ve had to grow up with two older boys, which hasn’t always been easy. You would have loved to have had a sister like Shirelle when you were little. Anyway, you must move on in the gardening world, I suppose. Of course, we’ll be very attentive to your instructions. I have always wanted a hybrid tea rose bed. And just the right place for it, isn’t it?”
“It sure is, Mrs. Fremont,” said Shirelle, poking a work-gloved finger decisively at her plan. “They’ll get nothing but sun here, and the soil is sandy, which means good drainage. I bet you have to water a lot here, though, for the grass and all.”
George leaned forward toward Shirelle, a disturbing shade of concern painted across his otherwise blank canvas of a face.
“I hate to be the reality-check guy here, but how much do you figure these beautiful roses will cost, Shirelle?”
Shirelle felt herself draw back involuntarily in shock. The thought of the Fremonts actually being cost-conscious about what they planted had never occurred to her. Since when did garden royalty ever concern itself with such trivialities as pricing? Just as she felt her jaw drop in dismay, Nan came to the rescue.
“Oh, George, this is not really the time, is it? We’ve got this beautiful plan here that Shirelle prepared for us, and why spoil its magnificence with our petty little money concerns? You go ahead with the hybrid teas, Shirelle, and we’ll reimburse you for every penny. Now, walk us through the rest of your wonderful schematic here.”
Covering much of the slope would be beds of Walker’s Low catmint, with stands of Happy Returns and Rosy Returns daylilies anchoring the left and right flanks. Spotted around the yard, often where some vertical edging was called for, were Magic Fountain delphinium of pink, blue, purple, and white. Shirelle was still working on placement of the ornamental grasses—Karl Foerster and prairie dropseed.
“I’m toying with a couple more ground covers and maybe even a tree or two. I love paper birches!”
“I love paper birches, too, Shirelle!” Nan cried. “And I had just been thinking about placing one at the bottom of the slope, where it levels out, next to the intersection. Then, maybe putting a little rock garden around it.”
“That’s exactly where I was thinking of putting it, Mrs. Fremont! You’ll need to give it plenty of TLC, though. Lots of mulch. A rock garden? Hmmm, I don’t know. You need to concentrate on moisture collection at the base of paper birches. Very nice, design-wise, though. We’ll see. You know, Mrs. Fremont, this would not be a paper birch’s favorite location. But in terms of letting it stick out in all its glory, yes!”
“Now, Shirelle,” said a suddenly stern Nan. “Your plan is wonderful and we’re delighted with it. I couldn’t have asked for anything better. But . . .”
But? But what? There are reservations? Shirelle felt the color drain out of her florid face.
“What I mean to say, Shirelle, is that I have one teensy-weensy concern.”
Nan leaned over the tabletop toward her in a conspiratorial way and began to whisper.
“I’ve heard through the grapevine that hybrid tea roses are stuck-up prima donnas. Real snobs. Um-hmmm. And that they will cause us nothing but grief.”
Wanting to be cooperative and conspiratorial, too, even though she had no idea what Nan was talking about, Shirelle lurched forward instead of leaning slowly, almost knocking heads with Nan. Nan cupped her hands around her mouth to whisper into Shirelle’s ear, which Shirelle had obligingly tilted toward her.
“Our backyard friends,” she said. “Our flowers. They know these things.” Shirelle nodded, then slowly looked around as if to spot any hidden and unwelcome eavesdroppers. She knew Mrs. Fremont was well-versed in the arcane art of plant whispering, but this was taking it to a whole new level. She tingled with excitement.
“Ordinarily, you might chalk this up to pettiness and jealousy,” Nan said. “But this is coming from reliable sources, too. You know, the petunias. They’re only here for a year. They believe they have to prove themselves during their brief existence by not only making themselves beautiful, but by ratting on the bad influences in the gardens.”
Shirelle just nodded. What could you say when someone was passing on such a remarkable confidence?
“Well, let’s go ahead with them,” said Nan, pulling away from Shirelle and throwing her hands up. “I’m sure we can handle a few difficult characters in the gardens. Not everyone can have the stoicism of the clematis or the equanimity of the daylily.”
“Or the humor of the variegated dogwoods,” said George, chuckling. “They’re such a hoot!”
“Yes, dear, you do have a way with the variegated dogwoods, don’t you? You must have tapped into their male persona. Their female persona is too snooty by far for my taste. Well, and I did have that problem with the Dusty Miller.”
“Ah, yes,” said Shirelle. “I heard about that.”
George wrinkled his nose and frowned.
“They wouldn’t grow for me, the little albino shits. They were the only ones that never responded to anything I did. All my coaxing, putting them first in line for the Miracle-Gro, singing my favorite songs to them. Lord knows, I tried everything. I’ll try them again sometime, though I must have earned a pretty bad reputation, yanking them out of the soil and throwing them in the compost the way I did.”
“Massacre,” George said. “They might have been mutes. Did you ever stop to consider that?”
“That’s putting it a little strong, George. Besides, they weren’t wanted. I never heard any of the other plants complaining about it when I did that. It was a ‘good riddance’ kind of thing.”
Shirelle smiled. Wasn’t it amazing that Mrs. Fremont could actually talk to her flowers! And Mr. Fremont, too, though Shirelle couldn’t help but believe that that was likely on a much more rudimentary level.
“Don’t forget the Baltimore oriole feeder and the bluebird houses, Shirelle.”
“Huh? I mean, excuse me?” Shirelle placed her fingertips decorously on her lips as if she had just said something untoward and instantly regretted it.
“The oriole feeder.”
Birds. Shirelle knew nothing about birds.
“And, while we’re at it, the bluebird houses. We already have them, so you don’t have to worry about making them.”
Shirelle bent over her drawing, looking for the best place to put these new additions to the front yard gardens. She stroked her chin, erased something, then drew something in. Nan leaned over to try to get a peek.
“Simple,” said Shirelle. “I’ve got the bluebird houses at either end of the highest part of the slope, then the oriole feeder smack in the middle, among the hybrid tea roses. The symmetry should work out just fine. It’s good to have a few manmade items sticking out of all the natural stuff.”
Mary, meanwhile, had gotten up and was inspecting the backyard gardens, which were poised to spring to life once the temperatures rose, now that the rains had stopped and a bright, direct May sun was shining down on them.
“Any day now,” Mary said, sitting back down at the patio. “God knows we’ve had plenty of rain. I can see the tips of hosta, there are buds on the creeping phlox, and the bleeding hearts are three inches tall. Hope they shoot up before getting covered by hosta leaves. Nothing wrong with the columbine. Another couple of days and they’ll be bursting out. Silver maples, ash, locust, and sugar maple just starting to leaf.”
A white sedan of uncertain make, but which looked vaguely familiar, pulled into the driveway.
“Who might that be?” wondered George.
A lanky middle-aged woman wearing oversized sunglasses got out of the front passenger side of the car, followed by the driver, a shorter, stouter woman, also wearing sunglasses.
“My God!” cried George.
“My God?” said Nan. “What are you ‘my God-ing’ about?”
“Keep looking. Because you will soon recognize Marta Poppendauber, accompanied by one Dr. Phyllis Sproot.”
“My God!” cried Nan.