Backyard (20 page)

George and Nan worked like gardeners possessed. They laid down more freshening cypress mulch, and checked and rechecked every blossom and leaf daily to make sure any browned and rabbit-nibbled clunkers got snipped off. To George's surprise, Nan gave up on the dusty miller and without so much as the faintest flicker of remorse dug out the offending plants and cast them with a cackle into the compost.

They gambled on a new plant, one that they could buy fully mature and in reasonably good condition, and scatter around the backyard, and that with proper watering and enough sunlight would guarantee them dozens if not scores of big, multicolored blooms. This was to be their go-for-broke trump card, the flower that would take them over the top, the one that would explode in the judges' faces like the floral version of nitroglycerin, and which nobody else that they could see was cultivating.

They gambled on the hibiscus.

19

The Wanton Flower

T
he tropical hibiscus is generally thought of as a denizen of the warmer, more moist Pacific climates, or of swampy areas of the United States untouched by snowflake or sleet pellet. It is most at home in places where heavy coats are stored more or less permanently in fragrant cedar closets, to be retrieved every three or four years when the mercury crashes through the freezing barrier, plunging maybe even to 29 or 28 degrees Fahrenheit, usually for about ten minutes, at about six a.m.

The plant can, however, live as a summer annual in the far northern reaches of the upper Midwest. The advantages presented by the tropical hibiscus are big blooms of garish yellow, orange, and salmon hues, often varying between the throat of the bloom and the individual petals. There is also the way it encourages otherwise semi-somnolent Midwesterners to break out the Hawaiian shirts and split open some coconuts.

For the more traditional gardeners prevalent in a suburb such as Livia, the notion of planting tropical hibiscus was something that had never even remotely occurred to them. A dignified magnificence was to be preferred. The garish opulence of the tropical hibiscus would, for them, be like putting neon signs on those quaint little bed-and-breakfasts in the picturesque towns along the Muskmelon River. You just didn't dabble in something like that and expect to be taken seriously. A tropical hibiscus would be much more in its element wedged behind the ear of some half-naked Polynesian wanton, or as the singular floral attraction at some pagan shrine to tastelessness, such as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Besides, they were transients, their blooms continually fading, to be replaced by gaudy newcomers. Such a rapid turnover would befuddle the average Livia gardener.

So, the Fremonts had their work cut out for them as they searched for the tropical hibiscus of the quality and in the quantity that they needed. No greenhouses or nurseries in Livia—of which there were four—offered such an extravagance. After an Internet search and a few phone calls, they were finally able to locate a greenhouse fifteen miles to the west, in Westmoreland, that had them, already four feet tall, and bursting with big blooms, with stiff stamens pointing straight out, and somewhat menacingly, at them.

The very sight of these large Day-Glo creations gave George and Nan pause. It looked as if they could morph into aliens at any second and shoot out a stream of noxious poison at them from their stamens. Or maybe the stamens sheltered long needles designed to immobilize victims. You should never go to sleep within striking distance of one of these, Nan reflected, as she stared, amazed, at one of the plant's fuchsia-colored flowers.

There was also a disturbing sexuality about them that reminded her of Georgia O'Keeffe's vaginal irises. These had a lushness and stench of immorality that eclipsed even those playmates of the plant world. They were also far more representative of the other sex.

“Look at the size of those stamens!” said Nan, caressing one. “And so stiff!” George slapped her hand away.

“Don't be handling the merchandise there, Nan-bee, especially when your mind has obviously sunk into the gutter.”

“C'mon, now. What's wrong with stroking a little plant tissue?”

“They certainly are rather obscene looking,” said George, who was chagrined to note that Nan continued to caress one of the stamens with her fingertips.

“Who knows, that could be good,” Nan said. “Look at it this way: they could appeal to the judges' subliminal, sexual urges. That could give us the psychological edge that can make us a winner. Daring! That's what the judges want.”

The Fremonts cleaned the greenhouse out of its remaining plants. In two days, they had all eighteen tropical hibiscuses planted.

“I hope they're happy,” said George, after he tamped down the last shovelful of dirt on hibiscus number twelve, which, along with the six others yet to be planted, would significantly brighten up the yard along its perimeter in four different clusters. “Because, God knows, this is their kind of weather.” He wiped his face with an already dampened bandanna.

“It is,” said Nan, gasping from the combination of the heat and having to kneel and stoop over for the past two hours. “Can't you see how perky and straight and bright they look? It's like they're saying, ‘Thank you, Nan and George, for finding such a nice, steamy home for us.' They love it here!”

“You're welcome,” said George, blinking rapidly as the salty sweat dribbled into his eyes and wiping his forehead again with the drenched and useless bandanna. He scanned the backyard for their most recent handiwork and saw it speckled with at least thirty blobs of bright, ultraconspicuous color. “Damn, those things are so . . . uh . . . uh . . .”

“Unique,” said Nan, finally getting her creaky knees to allow her to stand up. “No other garden in Livia has them . . . at least, not that we've seen. This is just the kind of risk-taking choice that will give us an advantage over the competition. I feel good about this.”

George, however, was being pricked by the harpies of self-doubt.

“I don't know,” he said. “They really stick out. They might be a bit much for our conservative judges. Maybe they'll think they're gauche, sort of like a Las Vegas flower, or like dropping a clown costume in the middle of everything.”

“We don't know that the judges are going to be conservative. They could be looking for something shocking, something they haven't seen anywhere else. Who knows, maybe your stupid Cervantes wood carving will catch their attention . . . or . . . or . . . Mr. Poison Plant over there.”

George flinched.

Two days later, Nan discovered that the new hibiscus plants could converse with her in a telepathic sort of hissing/humming way. It took her just a few hours to master this plant lingua franca and the following day she was greeting them with cooing baby talk, asking them how they were doing, if they needed misting or other special ministrations. She told them they were beautiful and that they would grow into fine adults that would bring pride to the Fremont backyard. Occasionally, when George was loitering out of earshot, she would whisper things to them about George that weren't very flattering but which Nan had to tell someone or some-
thing.

“I wish George would work harder,” she whispered to them one morning while showering them with garden hose mist. “He's kind of a lazy bum, don't you think? Look at him over there, will you? No ambition.”

Nan continued in this vein for several days, and the plants flourished, showing new growth and blossoms daily, and continually replacing the short-lived older blooms.

George approved, or at least didn't object, though he had at first been startled to observe Nan mumbling into what appeared to be thin air. But look at how well the new plants were doing! They were going great guns! Besides, he was gratified to admit that the hard-driving, passionlessly ambitious Nan who had emerged in the past couple of weeks—a Nan who had seemed a robotic stranger to him—had retreated, giving way to the Nan he was more accustomed to: gentle, relaxed, and okay, sure, a little bit weird in a touchy-feely kind of way.

Encouraged by Nan's gentle prodding, he began talking to the new plants himself. At first, he wasn't quite sure how to address a hibiscus plant, but Nan told him not to make it more complicated than it needed to be.

“Just say nice things to them in a soft or whispery tone,” she told him. “Never scold or raise your voice to them. Don't ever tell them they are letting you down or not growing enough. And, by all means, don't threaten to freeze them; they hate the cold. Act natural. No need to be stiff or formal. And be sincere. They can tell if you're just going through the motions.”

George, being a gracious, good-natured fellow not given to affectation, adapted quickly. Soon, he was making conversation with his new buddies, the hibiscus guys/girls, as natural a part of his day as watering and fertilizing them and inspecting them for bad bugs. One day, though, he noticed a problem.

“We've got trouble,” he told Nan. “The other flowers are getting jealous. They think we're lavishing too much attention on the hibiscuses.”

“Jealous?” said Nan. “What on earth are you talking about? What a ridiculous notion. How do you know they're jealous?”

“They told me so. And, by the way, what's this I hear about my being a lazy bum? Huh?”

20

The Gardening News

T
he so-called gardening expert sent over by the St. Anthony
Inquirer,
supposedly to fawn all over Dr. Sproot's gardens and write a hyperlaudatory puff piece about them, wasn't living up to Dr. Sproot's expectations. For one thing, he hadn't seemed all that bowled over on being introduced to her gardens. Dr. Sproot expected bulging eyes, exclamations of awestruck wonder, and a humble willingness to hang on her every word. Instead, he seemed confused. He even had the temerity to stifle a yawn.

What made his listless ignorance even more galling was the transformation the gardens had undergone. Evidently, Sarah the Witch's
un
spell was working because, my Lord, hadn't everything perked up so remarkably? And it had all happened four days ago. Overnight! Why, it was a miracle, that's what it was. If anything, it had done even better service than anticipated because, well, would you look at it all. Anything stronger and her flowers would have burst into a Maurice Chevalier song-and-dance routine.

So, why couldn't this lug nut of a journalist notice and do homage?

“ 'Scuse me,” he said sheepishly. “Not enough sleep last night.” Dr. Sproot shook her head in disgust at this lack of preparation. She would cut him some slack this once, but he'd better perk up quickly now that he was being led through the alpha and omega of Livia gardens. Why, such a floral treat should awaken the dead!

Roland Ready, suburban reporter of two years' undistinguished standing at the
Inquirer,
gazed over the grounds that Dr. Sproot introduced to him with a regal sweep of the hand. He had never seen so many flowers in one place in his life. Unimpressed, he was merely at a loss as to what to make of it.

“What are those?” he wondered, pointing to a bunch of large deserty-looking plants with spiked leaves angling out in every direction and big white-flowered stems sticking up a good three feet. “They're all over the place. Are they cactuses . . . or should I say cac
ti
?”

Dr. Sproot chuckled softly.

“Why, no, Mr. Ready, those are not cacti, those are yuccas, and, though you are right, they are quite at home in the desert, they can be cultivated right here in our upper Midwest, hundreds and hundreds of miles from the nearest desert. They are not common here, however, mostly because they require the nurturing of an expert who knows her business, such as myself, who has devoted her life to the care of plants and has her Ph.D. in horticulture.”

“Hmmmm,” said Roland in a way that didn't seem to Dr. Sproot to show sufficient deference. He was writing something down in his steno pad.

“That's
Dr.
Phyllis Sproot,” she said, craning her neck for a gander at all those squiggly-looking hieroglyphics he was committing to paper.

“I'm writing about the plant,” he said. “Describing it. Y-U-K-K-A?”

Dr. Sproot forced herself to emit a sharp little half-laugh that sounded more like a quack.

“No, it's Y-U-C-C-A.”

“Got it. And those over there, more of the same?” He pointed with his pen toward another cluster of yuccas.

“Why, yes,” said Dr. Sproot, not sure she liked his insouciant tone. “I may well be the reigning expert on yuccas in Livia, and perhaps even the entire St. Anthony metro area. So I have quite a few yuccas in the yard. There are some different varieties of yucca, as you will no doubt note.”

“No, I didn't note that,” he said.

Dr. Sproot frowned. How did someone such as this get to be a reporter if he couldn't even tell what a yucca was?

“The yucca, Mr. Ready, is the future of gardening in Livia. I have reason to believe that I am in the vanguard of a new gardening mindset in Livia.”

Roland had perked up from his post-lunch torpor when his editor handed him the thick packet of contest press materials. His instincts shouted at him that this could make for a great feature story. It would have pathos without degenerating into bathos. It would have ethos. It would show sympathy and empathy, but would not, he hoped, lead to entropy. Laid before him was a story about how a single event can bind an entire community together. Extrapolate it across the nation and even the world and it could serve as the blueprint for harmony and prosperity in our time.

He also figured it might help his career, stuck as it was in neutral. For two years, he had been covering crappy city council meetings, sleep-inducing school board deliberations, and the latest lame initiatives of various public works departments. A story such as this, properly reported and crafted, could propel him out of the suburbs into a beat more befitting his talents—the Statehouse beat! So promising was this story that it was already writing itself in his head before he had done one phone call's worth of reporting on it.

Roland pictured an idyllic community of avid gardeners. Their lawns would sprout pink flamingos and yard gnomes. They would spend every waking moment planting and transplanting, watering, seeding, digging away with little hand trowels hand-crafted by grouchy old guys in Maine who grew foot-long beards and smoked corncob pipes. Coarse work gloves would cover their hands, and baseball caps and spacious sun hats would shield their heads, as they bent down on their knees to do battle with the hated dandelion and all those other weeds with names he had neither seen spelled out or heard spoken. This contest would unite a whole community in one big beautification experiment. The town of Livia, heretofore an undistinguished bedroom burb with virtually no nightlife or cultural amenities to attract a full-blooded young man whose star would soon be in the ascendant, would become a model for mankind.

Roland had to look past some prejudices to concoct such a story line. The product of a well-to-do suburb himself, he was fresh from a world-renowned journalism school and six different internships at top-flight, unimpeachable newspapers across the nation.

Along the way, he had grown to see suburbia as a wasteland of unimaginative, middle-class morons who did little more than mow their lawns, go fishing, and hold Tupperware parties. He marveled at the bourgeois clownishness of such a yard contest. Wouldn't it be wonderful if he could spin the story another way? Deep inside, he wanted to turn it into a comic fable of how petty and inconsequential the masses could be in their quest for some trivial little acknowledgment barely worth noticing.

But that wasn't journalism and Roland was a true journalist now. He took pride in being driven by the most compelling story angle, and not by personal sentiment, however truthful and enlightening that might be.

He charged ahead to find the facts that would suit the particular angle he had chosen. He didn't call the source of the information, which had been passed on to him by his editor. That would be too easy and predictable. Instead, he called the chief custodian at the Valleydale Middle School, a nurse at the DoBeWell clinic, and the owner of Paws 'n' Stuff pet store, all of whom he'd profiled in past feature stories.

Much to his amazement, they knew nothing. At least, that's what they claimed. Here's where things got all messed up. It was where he needed to be nimble. Changing circumstances changed story angles. The good reporter could turn on a dime. What popped into Roland's mind suddenly had much more potential than the original angle, which now looked sappy and stupid. This reeked of a bigger story. Perhaps those sources were playing him for a fool. Maybe they were just pretending to know nothing. Corruption? Misplaced funds? Secret societies of moon worshippers defying zoning restrictions and performing perverted lunar rites on public property? When people got evasive on you, it could mean anything.

Roland wanted to probe further. He told his editor that he was certain there was something bigger here. He spent the next three days calling four more people in Livia whose positions should have assured him an entrée into the story he was pursuing. To his amazement, they didn't. This would be one of those tough nuts to crack. Where to turn next? He was about to call a sporting goods store owner whom his diligent research informed him was very likely the stepdaughter of the superintendent of schools from 1982 through 1983 when he sensed a looming and hunched-over presence.

“Have you ever thought about calling Burdick's?” said the editor, a wheezing, wizened old professional whom Roland saw as a coarse, burned-out old shell of a hack who didn't truly understand the time that was required to root out the big stories. “You might note that the number is right there at the bottom of the press release.”

The Burdick's people were very cooperative, eager as they were to get as much free publicity as possible. They furnished Roland with the rules of the contest and some background about Jasper Burdick.

They even gave Roland a list of the year's contestants, who had been asked to describe in general ways what any judges and other visitors might expect to see in their gardens.

Bingo! thought Roland. At least this is getting me
somewhere!
But which of these names to call? It was at that moment that a colleague, the terribly attractive yet resoundingly untalented and ditzy Midge waltzed up to his desk. Roland was sorry he couldn't remember her last name. He should remember it because he really liked the way her poorly hidden charms raised her blouse like tent poles pushing up a rain tarp.

“You're working on that Livia garden contest, Roland?” Midge asked as Roland forced himself to look up from her thrust-out blouse, and at her face. “My aunt's one of the contestants. Her name is Dr. Phyllis Sproot, Ph.D. She'll never let you forget it either. She's kind of a stiff, but she knows her stuff. You really should interview her.”

“Sure,” said Roland, eager to start off with someone he knew would talk to him and especially wanting to do whatever it took to please Midge.

 

Now why wasn't he paying attention? Dr. Sproot thought. Roland was ignoring her when she had important points to make. There he was, looking around again, all mopey and critical when he had no idea at all what he was witnessing. Why wasn't he listening to her and enthusiastically absorbing her sound arguments for why she was a shoo-in to win first prize in the Burdick's Best Yard Contest?

Dr. Sproot had done her darnedest to disparage every other gardener in the city and to pump up her own credentials to this Roland Ready fellow. But now here he was fumbling to understand something so far beyond his ken that it might as well have been quantum physics. Well, she supposed that was sufferable as long as it led to the end result: positive publicity that would convince the judges that she was the one to be crowned as Livia's gardening royalty.

“And those?” he said, pointing to one of several vast stretches of flora alive with blooms. “What are they? Are those roses?”

Dr. Sproot tittered insincerely. The buffoon!

“No, not even close. That is my coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend.”

“Salivate?” repeated Roland as he scratched it down in his pad. “Saliva?”

Dr. Sproot clapped her hands together and pursed her lips, as she often did when confronted with ignorance of the most abominable sort.

“No, Mr. Ready! Salvia. S-A-L-V-I-A. C-O-R-E-O-P-SI-S. H-O-L-L-Y-H-O-C-K. Got that, or am I going too fast for you? And, please, in the order of coreopsis first, and hollyhock last. It's important that you get them in the proper order.” Roland frowned as he scribbled madly onto his pad.

“Got it,” he said with a sigh that disturbed Dr. Sproot.

“You should know, Mr. Ready, that I am Livia's expert when it comes to the coreopsis-salvia-hollyhock blend. No one else in Livia even comes close, though there are a few that planted coreopsis, and maybe salvia, as a kind of sideline. For me, it is a passion.”

“Along with yuccas,” said Roland, scribbling furiously.

“Yes, they are separate, but intertwined as part of an overall garden design, and, oh, with a few other things just to leaven the mix.”

“Others?”

“Roses and dahlias.”

“Okay, roses and . . . how do you spell dahlias?”

Dr. Sproot was getting tired of serving as a plant dictionary for this undereducated bozo. She now realized that this was an unusually stupid person posing as an expert, and that he didn't know the difference between a rose and a pine tree, and might give some other, far less worthy contest entrant equal play. Her little dumbo of a niece, Midge, should have told her that.

What was he doing now? Roland retrieved and unfolded a wad of papers from his coat pocket and studied them intently. From the way the papers were tilted, Dr. Sproot could see the Burdick's letterhead. It was obviously part of the list of entrants that Burdick's had so unwisely been circulating despite her best efforts to put a stop to it.

“Would you like to go inside, Mr. Ready, and talk some more? I have an extensive background in horticulture, with my advanced degree and everything, and you might like to learn more about it.”

“Actually, I need to visit some of these other folks,” said Roland, peering at his list. “Some of these other gardens look really interesting.”

How the hell would he know that? thought Dr. Sproot peevishly. Those other gardens are all rot! Stupid little plots scratched out by uninspired hardscrabble people who call themselves gardeners and have no inkling as to what they're doing! How could he even think of putting those amateurish efforts on an equal footing with her own masterpiece, created with the benefit of years of knowledge and study and hard—very hard—work?

“Mr. Ready, you would be making a very big mistake going to any of those other homes.”

Roland looked up at her from his crumpled paper. “Why is that?”

“That is because they are very sad, very pathetic efforts at gardening by people who are only in it for the money. Mercenary people who haven't given to gardening the way I have given to it. You would be disappointed, and you would be unjust. They can't win. I have given you complete and unfettered access to my private property here and my private thoughts, and I, in all likelihood, will win this contest. Why do you need to go any further?”