The Year of the Garden, page 5
We spend the afternoon exploring the farm. Laura shows me the place in the barn where she found the family of mice, and the hollow log with the opossum. Next she shows me the garden. There are eight raised beds with icy paths in between, and a fence around the whole thing to keep the deer out. In the corner, there’s a pile of mulch and a compost bin.
“Wow, this is a professional garden,” I say. I think of my backyard with the honeysuckles all around and new weeds popping up each day. How will our garden ever look like this one? I wonder for a second if we really should plant our seeds here, where everything is in perfect order. I look at Laura, and she seems to know what I’m thinking. “Mrs. Shepherd is really happy about our backyard garden.” I swallow. “Every time I see her, she asks about our progress.”
Laura is listening. “I think old people like to know . . . I mean, they want their things to keep going.” Laura slips on the ice and grabs on to my jacket. “My aunt said she can give us some asparagus shoots.” She wrinkles her nose. “Even though I don’t like it.”
“I bet everyone will like our chocolate cherry tomatoes.” I smile.
By the time we go back home to Ohio, Goo has had five feedings, and we have enough milk to last until Monday, when Laura’s mom says she will get more milk at the pet store.
Chapter Twelve
Freedom
By Christmas, Goo is almost twice as big as he was when we found him. And by Chinese New Year, he looks practically grown.
“Let’s give him some carrots,” I say, as we head into my house. “To celebrate the year of the Ox.”
Mom is sitting at our new dining room table with three red envelopes, one for Ken, one for me, and one for Laura. “Xin nian kuai le,” she says, handing Laura one of the envelopes.
“That means happy new year,” I say.
Laura blushes. “Thank you,” she says, smiling.
“We get a red envelope every year,” I say.
Mom nods. “This is our tradition in China, called hong bao.”
Laura tries to repeat, but it sounds like honk bow.
“Very good,” Mom says.
Laura feels the envelope. “What’s inside?”
“Open it,” Mom says. “You will see.”
Laura and I open our envelopes at the same time. “Thank you,” Laura says again, holding the chocolate coins in the palm of her hand. She puts them back into the envelope. “I’m going to show my mom.”
I open the fridge and take out a carrot. “Goo’s Chinese New Year gift,” I say, breaking it in half and giving the top to Laura as we head back out.
On the way to Laura’s, I glance down at our garden. The weather has been too cold and wet to work outside, plus with Goo, and Laura’s soccer practices, there hasn’t been much time. We still don’t have the raised beds ready. From the sidewalk, it looks more like a mud hole than a garden.
“We need to start working on the raised beds,” I say, pointing to the garden.
Laura doesn’t say anything,
We let Goo out of his box every day to explore. His nose twitches a lot and his ears move back and forth. He eats weeds in the backyard, and we give him lettuce, carrots, and apple slices.
“I’ll ask my aunt when we should let him go,” Laura says.
The woods are big and scary. “What if a cat comes and attacks him?” I ask. “Maybe we should just keep him as a pet.”
Laura shakes her head. “He wouldn’t be happy.”
Aunt Clare says we should let Goo out for longer and longer periods of each day. Then, when the weather warms up, we can set him free.
Each time we let him out, Goo goes farther away from his box. He follows his nose, sniffing in the bushes and grass and thistle weeds. He ventures to the edge of the driveway. Then one day, after we let him out, we go into Laura’s house garage to get a jump rope, and when we get back, Goo is gone. We search all over the gully and the hillside, and even down the street, but we don’t see a gray rabbit with a white tail.
“What if he’s lost?” I say.
“Rabbits don’t get lost.” Laura looks down and her hair falls over her face. “I think he decided it was time to leave.”
Laura’s eyes are watery. I touch her arm. “Do you want to go into your house and play cards?” I ask.
We go inside and play concentration on Laura’s living room floor. Then she teaches me how to play war and twenty-one. After a while, we go into the kitchen to get a drink of water. Laura looks out the back window. “I can’t stop worrying about Goo.”
“I know. Me either.”
“I wonder if we’ll ever see him again.”
“I hope so,” I say, trying to spot a gray rabbit with a white tail on the hillside. “Want to go plant the lettuce seeds?” I ask. “Mrs. Shepherd said it’s a cool-weather crop.”
When Laura pulls her eyebrows together, I tell her about pulling out the poison ivy. “Mrs. Shepherd told me how to get rid of it. Each time I see it, I dig it out by the roots. I think it’s all gone.” I look at Laura. “But if you’re worried about it, we can do something else.”
Laura wipes her hands on her jeans and we head out.
We take turns using the railroad spike to break up the clods of dirt.
“Do you think this railroad spike is a real antique?” I ask.
Laura looks at it. “I’ll ask my mom. It sure looks old.”
After the dirt is smooth, we find small stones to mark the section for the lettuce. Then we make little lines with our fingers, sprinkle the lettuce seeds in the groves, cover them up with a little bit of fine soil, and pat them down.
“Do you think we should water them?” Laura asks.
The air is damp. “Rain is coming,” I say.
I mark the ends of the rows with twigs so we’ll remember where we planted the seeds. Then I look around our garden. It looks so small and bare. I wonder if it’ll ever look like Mary’s secret garden with vines and purple flowers and vegetables all around.
I walk down the hill with Laura. The sky is gray and the air is chilly. “It’ll be weird to go to sleep without thinking about Goo in his box,” Laura says. “Sometimes I hear owls at night and I think one could swoop down and kill a baby rabbit.”
“Goo isn’t that small anymore.”
Laura nods. We look down the street. “I hope he knows to stay away from cars.”
“And cats,” I say.
“I hope Goo can find other rabbit friends.”
“I hope he finds things to eat.”
“I hope he has a good life,” Laura says. She’s trying hard not to cry.
“Maybe we’ll see him around.” I look toward the gully.
“Maybe,” she says, heading down the hill. “See you tomorrow.”
We both keep saying bye until I can’t see Laura anymore.
Chapter Thirteen
A Storm
It rains for three days in a row, and the garden floods. Mrs. Shepherd says that a good soaking never hurts, but I think the lettuce seeds probably washed out to the street and down the sewer.
“In that case you’ll have to replant,” she says. “The weather is one of those things in life we cannot control. I’ve saved some egg cartons for you, Anna. Thought you could start the tomato plants about now.” She puts her head back to rest. “Then, once they’ve grown their real leaves and the ground is warm, you can set them out. The secret is, make the hole deep. They’ll grow more roots right out of the stem.”
I want to ask Mrs. Shepherd about how we can attract hummingbirds, but I know that talking tires her out. She goes to lie down on the sofa. Ken and I sit on the living room floor looking through the box of magazines. We both like the pictures that have a list of objects hidden somewhere. In the last one, I find a rabbit hidden among the leaves in a tree.
“That’s Goo,” I tell Ken.
He smiles. “Rabbits can’t climb trees.”
“Maybe ours can.”
Lightning fills the room and the thunder comes fast. “Storm’s right on us this time,” Mr. Shepherd says. He explains how you can tell the distance you are from a storm by the time between the lightning and the thunder.
“That’s cool,” Ken says, counting two seconds between the next bolt of lightning and the thunder.
“I always did like a good storm,” Mrs. Shepherd says. “Long as I’m not out in it and nobody gets hurt.”
“I wonder how our rabbit is doing,” I say.
“Animals know how to hide,” Mr. Shepherd says. “Your rabbit will be just fine. I’m sure he found a hollow tree stump to wait it out.”
“I don’t know. Goo didn’t have a mother to teach him stuff.”
Mrs. Shepherd motions for me to sit by her on the sofa. “Some things are instinct, Anna.” She is talking so quietly, I can hardly hear. “Your bunny will know how to hide from the rain even if nobody taught him.”
“Do you know which flowers attract hummingbirds?” I ask.
Mrs. Shepherd thinks for a minute. “Foxglove and lupine.”
I get a piece of paper and a pencil and Mrs. Shepherd tells me again. Mr. Shepherd says when the weather warms up, he can give me some of the plants they have in their backyard. “Good to separate them,” he says. “Thin them out a bit.”
The wind is whipping the tree branches around and the rain is blowing sideways, hitting the window. Ken grabs my arm, and suddenly the room is dark.
“Power out,” Mr. Shepherd says, wheeling himself over to the drawer and getting one big flashlight and two little ones. “Here, one for each of you,” he says, handing the small ones to us. Mom joins us in the living room.
There is a knock on the door, and Dad steps in. His hair is wet and water is dripping off his jacket. “I was worried about you,” he says, taking a package of candles out of his jacket pocket. In his other hand is a box of my favorite snack, Cheddar Cheese Nips.
We light the small candles. Then we help Mrs. Shepherd to the table, and all six of us sit around eating Cheese Nips and watching the candles burn down.
I play with the melted wax, molding it with my fingers. I roll it into a ball, then pull out a small head and two long ears. Soon it takes the shape of a little bunny.
Chapter Fourteen
A Story
Mr. Ellis gives each of us a blank bound book to write and illustrate a story about anything we want. But before we actually write the story into the book, we’re supposed to plan it out. The first step is called brainstorming, Mr. Ellis says. That’s when you let your brain wander to find ideas.
“I might write about Lily,” Laura says. “My grandma found him when he was just a puppy, tied up to the playground fence.”
“You mean somebody tied him up and left him?” Matthew asks.
Laura nods.
“I’m going to write about our vacation in Florida,” Simon says. “The waves were taller than me.”
“I’m going to write about the soccer finals,” Rebecca says.
Mr. Ellis says we should make a list of at least five ideas. Then we’re supposed to circle the one we like best, and try to list more details. Kids are writing really fast. Laura seems to have a whole list. But my mind is blank. I write my name, Anna Wang, in fancy cursive, and I draw squiggles around it. I draw flowers around the border of the paper. But my mind won’t wander.
Finally I start to write:
One day I got some seeds. And then I thought maybe I could plant a real garden. I got this idea because I read The Secret Garden. I think this might be my favorite book I ever read. I stop writing for a minute. I actually got the seeds before I read the book. I start over.
My mom says when I was a baby I used to love to play with dirt and when I got bigger, I picked her bouquets of little flowers. When we drove places, we passed farms and I wished I lived on one. That’s why when I got some seeds, I thought I could make my own garden. Then I read a book called The Secret Garden and my biggest wish in the world is to make a garden like that.
I look up and Mr. Ellis is walking around the room. When he gets to me, I think he might say that I didn’t list my ideas, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Then I ask if he ever read The Secret Garden.
He nods. “One of my favorites.” He lets his eyes move over my paragraph. “Glad you’ve got an idea now, Anna.” He goes on to Lucy, who sits next to me.
When the bell rings, it’s hard to believe it’s already three o’clock. “Want to come over?” I ask Laura.
She nods.
After so much rain, everything is clean and bright. Daffodils are blooming in most of the yards, and the grass is green.
“I like dandelions,” I say, picking one that is blooming by the edge of the sidewalk.
“I don’t see why they’re weeds,” Laura says. She picks a purple flower. “Violets, too.”
Ken finds a weed with white flowers growing out of a crack in the sidewalk.
By the time we get to my house, Ken, Laura, and I have a whole bouquet. We put the flowers into a vase.
“So beautiful,” Mom says.
“They’re weeds,” Laura says.
“Beautiful weeds,” Mom says. She takes three baotse out of the freezer and puts them into the steamer for our snack.
Laura looks at me. “How do you say ‘thank you’ in Chinese?”
“Xie xie,” I tell her.
Laura turns to my mom. “Xie xie,” she tries to say.
“Bu xie,” Mom says. “That means ‘you’re welcome.’”
“What are these buns called?” Laura asks.
“Baotse,” I say. “With red bean paste inside.”
“I don’t like beans,” she says.
“These are really sweet. You should try them.”
Laura hesitates. “I’m not that good at trying new things.”
I think about that for a minute. “I’m not either. Especially things like soccer.”
While Mom is steaming the baotse, we go out to check on the garden, and sprinkled on the black dirt are tiny green dots.
“Lettuce!” I shout. I can’t believe it sprouted so fast!
“Those tiny things?” Laura asks.
We look closely at the soil, trying to decide which green dots are actually lettuce and which are weeds popping up after the rain. I hope none of them are new poison ivy plants.
“It’s not really in rows like we planted it,” Laura says.
“I guess the rain moved the seeds around.”
“Our garden has a mind of its own,” Laura says.
Chapter Fifteen
A Setback
I can’t believe I slept until almost ten.
“I was wondering when you were going to finally wake up,” Ken says.
He wants me to help him with a diorama he’s supposed to make for school about a book that he likes. “But I don’t like any books,” he says.
“That’s not true. You’ve read all the Dr. Seuss books.”
Ken is almost in tears. “Those are baby books.”
We look at the books on my shelf. “Here, I’ll read you the first chapter of this one,” I say, taking Sarah, Plain and Tall off my shelf. “Then you can read the rest of it by yourself.”
We sit together in the new beanbag chair in the living room and I end up reading Ken the whole book.
“I like Caleb best,” he says. Ken is thinking for a minute. “I wish their mother didn’t die.”
“At least they like Sarah.”
“And she likes them,” Ken says. He decides to put Caleb and the dogs in the diorama. And their house with the flower garden. I help him draw the people, but he cuts everything out and tapes the characters in himself.
After lunch, I go out to the garden. But something looks different. There are lots of holes in the dirt, and many of the lettuce plants have big bites out of their leaves. Some have been eaten all the way down to the ground, leaving only a small green nub. I feel tears come to my eyes. After all the work we did to make the garden, everything is ruined! I wish I’d never tried to make a garden in the first place. First the land had to be cleared, then it turned into a muddy mess, and now when finally the plants started to grow, they’re all eaten up. I wish Mrs. Shepherd were here. She would know what to do.
I run down the hill to get Laura.
“I wonder if it was rabbits,” she says as we hurry back to my house. Laura looks closely at the leaves. Then she points to the dirt. “Those are rabbit paw prints.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s how their feet are, remember?”
“Maybe it was Goo.” And then I am crying.
Laura touches the small plants. “I think most of them’ll grow back. I’ll call my aunt. She’ll know what to do.”
Aunt Clare says that first we should sprinkle black pepper on the plants that are left. That should keep the rabbits away for the time being. Then when she comes to town on Wednesday, she can bring us some chicken wire to make a small fence around the lettuce bed.
Laura is thinking. “And let’s plant some more lettuce outside of the fence for the rabbits.”
Laura’s idea makes me smile. “Then we can have our salad, and Goo can have his dessert,” I say.
Chapter Sixteen
A Birthday Celebration
