Chapter Nine
The birds woke her again the next morning, and Calisa found them marginally less annoying now that she knew to expect them.
Opening the curtains, she looked outside.
The morning sun bathed the forest and mountains with a golden glow as a misty haze rose off everything green.
“Wow,” she breathed, transfixed once again.
There was so much green.
Actually, too much green.
She instantly knew what she wanted to tackle today: a task that would solve all her great-aunt-not-liking-her problems and secure her position here…or at least make Auntie Zee give another friendly grunt…aka saving the gardens.
The only flaw was that she didn’t know how.
After making pancakes for the guests and eating her share with Jack—this time she tried the blueberry maple syrup, which was just as delicious as the raspberry—she said, “What do you know about gardening?”
“Um, you know. Groundskeeper’s son. What do you want to know?”
She dunked the last bite of pancake into a pool of blueberry syrup. “I live in an apartment. Our only plant is a spider plant that’s basically indestructible. So assume I know nothing.” While Jack turned toward the sink, his back toward her, she dipped her finger into the last of the syrup.
“Well, it’s pretty much just common sense.
” As he talked and cleaned the pancake batter bowl, she eyed her plate and decided it would not be classy to lick it.
“You just give the plants what they want—if they like sun, you plant them in the sun. If they need shade, you plant them in the shade. Give them room to grow. Clear out any weeds. Water them if they need it. Don’t…
I don’t know…stomp on any plants? Why do you ask? ”
Continuing to resist the urge to lick the rest of the maple syrup off her plate, she carried both plates to the sink, handing them to him.
He dunked them into the soapy water. “I’m thinking that today we could try to make it look less like the plants are taking over and more like an actual garden,” she said. “Unless you have other plans?”
Jack looked out the back window. She could see the doubt etched on his face, even in profile. He’s not going to agree, she thought. “It’s gotten kind of out of hand,” he said. “I thought it could wait until my dad got back, but…”
Calisa glanced out the window at the rampant overgrowth.
Kind of out of hand? It could hide an entire family of bears easily.
“How long has your dad been gone? You didn’t say.
” When Jack said he’d gone for supplies, she’d assumed it was only a couple of days, but the yard couldn’t have gotten this out of control that fast. It wasn’t days of growth out there or even weeks. Could it be months?
He didn’t answer.
“Jack? You okay?” Had his dad been gone for months?
He rinsed the plates, then put them on the drying rack, wiped his hands on the dish towel, and completely failed to answer her question.
She eyed him and decided not to push. He’d open up when he was ready.
Or not. It’s not my business. Especially if she didn’t want to risk driving him away.
“Where do you think we should start? Front of house? Near the porch? It’s the first impression for any guests.
” She wouldn’t be surprised if potential guests saw the botanical disaster before them and just turned right around and went to a different bed-and-breakfast. All the weeds and brambles made the inn look abandoned.
Jack’s shoulders relaxed minutely. “Sure, front sounds good.”
Auntie Zee hobbled into the kitchen. “Good for what?”
“We’re going to weed by the front porch?” Calisa couldn’t help it coming out like a question, and she immediately wished she’d sounded more forceful, like she knew what she was doing, even though everyone knew she didn’t.
Calisa held her breath, expecting Auntie Zee to scowl, glower, or tell them not to. But instead, she said, “Gardening tools are in the greenhouse.”
“Ah, okay, great.” Wow, she had not expected Auntie Zee to say something helpful. Maybe she’s coming around on us fixing the inn. “Thanks.”
“It’s pointless, though,” Auntie Zee said. “It’ll just all grow back.”
“Not immediately,” Calisa protested.
“Years ago, there were beds of flowers around the inn. Daffodils and tulips in the spring, then the peonies and daisies. And the lilacs. You should have smelled the lilacs. I even had climbing roses on the porch.” For an instant, Auntie Zee looked wistful, then she scowled again. “It was a lot of work.”
“But worth it for the flowers, right?”
“Flowers die. Or they’re eaten by deer and rabbits. And then the deer and the rabbits call all their friends and have a banquet, and you might as well not bother.” She paused. “But you two do as you want.”
Well, that was almost an endorsement.
Before Auntie Zee could change her mind and tell them not to, Calisa pulled Jack out through the kitchen door into the inn’s backyard.
It was a beautiful day. The summer morning sun was like a kiss, and she lifted her chin to feel it on her skin.
The sky was cloudless and as blue as a kindergartner’s drawing of a landscape.
She waded through the grass past the apple tree toward the greenhouse.
The door was propped open, as they’d left it. Jack entered first and stopped. “Huh.”
She peeked in behind him.
The lizard was lounging on the highest shelf. One of the leathery flaps on his back had unfolded, and it reminded Calisa of a bat wing. She guessed he wasn’t molting after all—the leathery flaps were part of him. “Did he fly up there?”
“Lizards don’t fly,” Jack said.
He certainly looked like he could have.
“Well, except flying lizards,” he amended. “But they live in Asia, and their ‘wings’ are more thin skin between their legs, kind of like flying squirrels.”
If she had access to Google, she’d have looked it up, but as it was…“He has wings.” Studying them, she could see the thin bones that stretched through the delicate skin. “They’re like bat wings. Kind of pretty.”
Jack handed her a pair of gardening gloves. “See if these fit.”
She shook the dirt off them. They were stiff, but no holes. She tried them on, and they fit fine, loose around the fingers but workable. “I’m going to name him Draco. You know, because he looks like a mini dragon.”
“That’s a terrible name,” Jack said loudly.
She shot him a look. That was a particularly vehement opinion from the usually laid-back Jack. So far, he hadn’t been anything but sunny and occasionally anxious. She hadn’t thought he was capable of arguing about anything.
Less vehemently, he said, “He, uh, doesn’t look like a dragon at all.”
“He’s a lizard with wings,” Calisa said. “He totally does.”
“You’re going to give him a complex, making him think he’s something he’s not.”
“Or it’ll give him ambition.”
Jack handed her clippers. He took a pair of shears with long handles and held them over his shoulder. “I just think he doesn’t look like a Draco.”
“What do you think he looks like?”
He thought for a moment. “He looks like a Steve.”
She laughed. “Okay. Bye, Steve. Let us know if you need more worms.”
With the gardening tools and gloves, Calisa headed out of the greenhouse and walked with Jack through the tall grasses and weeds around to the front of the bed-and-breakfast. The gravel driveway led out of the pine forest and curled up to the front door.
It had once been lined with rosebushes and hydrangea bushes and probably countless flowers.
Now it was all overrun with weeds. Vines crept over everything, especially the bushes in front of the porch.
She could see why Jack had just given up on it.
It was overwhelming, and this was just the front yard.
Calisa tried to make out the intended shape of the yard, but it was all far too overrun.
“How do I tell what’s weed and what isn’t?” she asked.
Standing next to her, Jack was surveying the disaster too. “A weed is just any plant that’s growing where you don’t want it to grow.”
Fair enough. She continued to contemplate the vast expanse of bushes, brambles, and vines. How on earth had it gotten this bad? What had Jack been doing with his time? And his dad? He was supposedly the groundskeeper. Why wasn’t anyone keeping the grounds?
Nearby, the statue of the stone lady stood in between grapevine-covered rosebushes with her hands clasped in front of her.
Calisa wondered if it had been moved again or if she was just misremembering.
She opened her mouth to ask, but before she could, Steve the lizard waddled out of the grass and plopped himself at her feet as if the journey had been utterly exhausting and he resented every inch of it.
“Oh. Hey, Steve. Are you going to help?”
Angling himself so his back faced the sun, he sprawled on one of the walkways, which couldn’t have been a more clear no if he’d spoken.
“Guess we have an audience.” Calisa turned back to the B&B and put her hands on her hips. “How about we start on the left side of the porch? And then we can work out from there?” That should make it feel like less of a Herculean task.
“Sure,” Jack said.
Steve gave a contented snort and rolled onto his side.
Together they attacked the bushes. Calisa yanked vines away, while Jack clipped them free. She winced as branches scratched her arms and thought she should have worn long sleeves, but after a while she started to sweat and was glad for the short sleeves and shorts.
Leaves showered down on her as she tugged on a knot of vines, and she leaned backward for leverage.
With snaps and pops and creaks and groans, vines separated from the porch in one massive kraken-like tumbleweed.
She staggered backward, then caught her balance.
Jack joined her, and together they dragged the debris to the edge of the forest and left it in a tangled pile.
They waded back through the weeds to the porch.