Front Yard (25 page)

Nan rushed over to inspect the offending pest, a tiny, concentrated blob of gray mucus distinctly visible on one of the leaves.

“My gosh,” she said, flicking it off. “I've never seen a slug in these gardens. Never. And look here at the leaf. It's got holes where the slug's been chowing down. I hope and pray this isn't the sign of an infestation.”

As Nan turned, she noticed another slug on a neighboring delphinium. Then, another. She counted six on yet a fourth. Shirelle grabbed her by the arm.

“Mrs. Fremont, we have to act now,” she said. “Beer. Do you have beer?”

“No, Shirelle, we're wine and gin drinkers; you know that. And I'm not sure this is the time—”

“That's okay; I have some beer at home. I'm going to go get it. You'll need to get all the shallow containers you can find. We need to bury them in the ground so they're flush with the surface. Saucers for your clay flower pots should work. But no drainage holes. Then, we'll fill 'em with beer. It's the yeast that does the trick. They climb into the beer to get at the yeast scent and drown. I'm outta here. Be back in a jiff. Oh, Dr. Brockheimer, grab a shovel from out of the shed. We'll need some holes to put the beer basins in. Just a couple of inches, and flattened bottoms.”

“Oh. Okay, Shirelle.”

“That way, Dr. B,” Nan said, pointing to the shed, just visible behind the northwest corner of the house. “Pretty sure it's unlocked. I'm headed to the garage for clay saucers.”

Suddenly, there was Mary, just arrived home from work and standing next to her.

“Hey, Mom, what's everyone running around for? And what's with Shirelle? She just peeled out of the driveway as I was pulling in. Almost hit me.”

“Well, don't just stand there, girl,” Nan barked. “We've got a serious infestation problem here. Slugs.” Nan gave Mary her instructions and sent her running off to the backyard to find George.

Dr. Brockheimer rummaged around in the shed for a few minutes before finding the shovels, then spent a few more minutes weighing whether to take the triangular-pointed spade, the rounded transplanting shovel, or the square-edged shovel. When she returned with the square-edged shovel, she stopped and stared, stunned, at what lay before her eyes. The front yard gardens had taken on the appearance of one big, crawling organism, and emitted a low sort of crackling noise. It was the sound of tens of thousands of insects eating and digesting stems, leaves, buds, and blooms.

“Ah!” she cried, dropping the shovel.

Nan was already laying out her clay saucers. George and Mary grabbed quick handfuls and ran past Dr. Brockheimer and toward the backyard, without saying a word. Announced by a couple of short beeps, Shirelle pulled into the driveway, jumped out of the car, and popped open the trunk.

“That was quick!” shouted Nan.

“Didn't go home,” Shirelle shouted back as she climbed the slope lugging two cases of Tippy Toes microbrew. “Went straight to the liquor store. Got any bug juice?”

“Just the ant stuff and yellow jacket spray. Will that work?”

“Probably not.”

“I can run to the hardware store.”

“That'll take too long the way things are going. Hmmm . . . Okay, there's one thing that might work. Mrs. Fremont, do you have some liquid dishwashing detergent?”

“Of course. At least I think so. We eat on paper plates a lot.”

“Do you have one of those Miracle-Gro thingeys you attach to your garden hose?”

“Yes. Definitely . . . Ah, I think I know what you're getting at.”

“Put about two cupfuls of detergent in it, attach it to the hose, and we'll wash everything down.”

“And that'll work?”

“There's a chance. That's all I can promise. I'm hoping the sun's low enough in the sky. Otherwise, everything we wash is gonna get cooked. That's because the detergent magnifies the rays . . . Good Lord!”

They both looked at the hybrid teas, which were crawling with so many insects they looked like little twitching scarecrow beings. They walked up for a closer look.

“My God!” moaned Nan. “The aphids are here, too. Japanese beetles. What kind of plague
is
this?”

“No time for talk,” said Shirelle. “Let's get a move on.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Nan said, mimicking a salute.

“Hey, over there! Doc!” Shirelle yelled at Dr. Brockheimer, who was standing transfixed, in awe of the devastation that was being unleased on the Fremonts' gardens. “Get crackin'. Dig holes where the saucers are laid out, and make sure they're in, flush with the ground. C'mon, now.” Shirelle reached down to tear open the case of Tippy Toes, and pulled out a can.

“Pretty pricey stuff for a bunch of slugs,” she said, popping the tab and taking a big glug. “Ahhhh. You're letting me expense account this, I assume.”

“But of course,” said Nan with a wan smile. “If a slug's gonna drown in beer, it might as well be the best. Gives us all some good karma.”

29

B
y nightfall, nothing else could be done. Every garden plot, front and back, had been sprayed, covering everything with soapsuds. Thirty-seven beer-filled saucers placed at various locations were filled with drowned slugs. But still they kept coming in such numbers that you could actually hear them eating and digesting flowers, leaves, and stems. George, Nan, Mary, Shirelle, and Dr. Brockheimer sat on the front landing, drinking what was left of the Tippy Toes microbrew.

“If I hadn't seen it, I never would have believed it,” said Dr. Brockheimer, after taking a long swig of her beer. “What I have witnessed today defies all the canons of horticultural knowledge.”

“Yes, well, after this, I'm afraid our gardening days are through,” said Nan. “We can't continue to fight whatever these forces are that keep assaulting our gardens. It's just not worth it. George already has his job. Now, I guess I'll have to go out and get one myself. . . . By the way, where the heck are those boys? They could have helped.”

“You forget, Nan-bee, they've got the evening shifts,” George said. “Back by ten-thirty at the earliest. And after that, they're probably off to hang out with friends. Besides, what good would they have been?” Mary snorted.

“Ain't that the truth,” she said.

“Don't be making any rash decisions about your future right now, Mrs. Fremont,” Shirelle said. “Remember last year? It was like magic, Dr. Brockheimer. I mean, their gardens sprang right back. In August! After being destroyed by a freak hailstorm!”

“Yes, so you've said, Shirelle,” Dr. Brockheimer said. “And I have read your report and the news clipping you included with it. It's just that I never believed it. Until now.”

“And don't forget that note you found when we were out looking for fairies,” Mary said. “Someone wants to help. Maybe it's that same someone who helped last year.”

“Looking for fairies?” said Dr. Brockheimer, her eyes wide open in amazement. “I'm not even going to ask.”

“What was
that?
” said Mary, bolting straight up out of her slouch.

“I heard it, too,” said Shirelle. Within seconds, everyone could hear a cacophony of croaks and chirrups. Then, the front yard was alive with them, frogs and toads by the hundreds, the thousands. In the dimming light, the gardens looked like one huge trampoline for bouncing amphibians.

“They're eating the bugs!” Mary cried.

“Of course they are,” said Dr. Brockheimer. “The bugs must have attracted them from the lake, and maybe from miles around. They may save your gardens yet.”

In fifteen minutes it was all over. The frogs and toads had melted away, though to exactly where was unclear.

“My God!” cried Dr. Brockheimer. “They just disappeared. Where did they go?”

“Don't ask,” said Nan resignedly. “Because there's no answer that will make any sense at all. Well, I'm shot. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've had enough excitement for one day. We'll survey the damage tomorrow. Maybe we can salvage something. But, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure I care that much anymore.”

“Me neither,” said George, more bemused than shocked at what had happened over the past couple of hours. “But I will say one thing: This beer is dy-no-mite.”

As they walked down the driveway toward their cars, Shirelle noticed that Dr. Brockheimer was treading carefully and watching her feet.

“Don't worry, Dr. Brockheimer,” she said. “You won't step on any frogs or toads.”

Dr. Brockheimer, flushed with excitement, chuckled.

“How can I ever possibly write this up?” she said. “No academic journal would ever accept it. There's no proof. No scientific evidence.”

“Who says you have to write it up?” said Shirelle.

“No one,” replied Dr. Brockheimer. “No one at all.”

 

The devastation the Fremonts beheld the next morning, while certainly severe, fell short of utter destruction. Entire swaths of the backyard remained untouched for some reason. The front yard was a patchwork. Many of the flowers and grasses had been damaged, some horribly. Others appeared to have survived the infestation with only minor injuries or none at all.

“This could have been so much worse, Mr. and Mrs. Fremont,” said Dr. Brockheimer, who returned with Shirelle to survey the damage. “You've lost some things, sure. But I think a lot of these will bounce back. Maybe not this year. Next year's the true test.” Nan nodded meekly as George examined the hybrid tea roses close up.

“These guys got chewed up pretty good,” he said. “As delicate as they are, I'm not sure they can ever come back.”

“I can almost hear them moaning,” said Nan. “The poor things.”

“Yeah,” said Shirelle. “I think the hybrid teas are goners. The delphinium took quite a hit, too. The daylilies are fine; they're almost immortal. The ornamental grasses were hardly touched. And, this is amazing: The Walker's Low catmint looks like it's in pretty good shape—a little chewed up, but not too bad. Next year, we'll just need to re-plant a few things, and we'll be back in business. Anyone take a look at the backyard?”

All except George, who was running late for work, walked around the north end of the house to the backyard. Nan was prepared for the worst, and, initially, that's what she got.

“These new beds are toast,” she said as she walked the northern, woods-bordered perimeter of the gardens, then worked her way along the fence line before veering into the heart of the backyard. “A lot of other things hurt.”

Even on the south side of the split-rail fence, there was plenty of damage.

“My blue hydrangea!” Nan gasped. “Eaten alive!”

Shirelle could feel tears began to pool in her eyes.

“And the spirea! And the . . . well, the Asiatic lilies and the purple coneflowers look a bit roughed up, but not too much the worse for the wear. Same with the monarda and balloon flowers.”

“Mom!” Mary cried. “Look down here!”

Nan was level with the north edge of the patio now, and it seemed she'd entered a completely different world.

“This is
so
weird,” Mary said. “It's as if the bugs never got to anything between the patio and the street. The climbing roses and clematis are fine. The phlox and alyssum untouched. You could almost draw a line across the backyard to separate what got nailed and what didn't.”

“How strange,” said Nan. “Hmmm, here's a visitor who might be able to shed some light on our situation for us.”

Marta Poppendauber was examining the yard as she slowly negotiated the pea gravel steps to the patio.

“My goodness,” she said, stepping onto the patio. “Well, at least we were able to save part of it.”

“
We?
” said Nan. Marta glanced nervously at the group clustered around her. “Go ahead, Marta. This is our daughter, Mary, our intern, Shirelle Eadkins, and Dr. Hilda Brockheimer from the university. You can speak freely. Nothing will surprise them at this point.”

“Edith and I. We knew Dr. Sproot was up to no good and came over here the other night to stop her.”

“Let me guess—Dr. Sproot figured out some way to make our flowers bait for every garden pest within a ten-mile radius. I won't even ask how.”

“That's pretty much it,” said the shamefaced Marta. “We were able to scare her off before she finished the job, and Edith had something up her sleeve.”

“That being the frogs and toads?”

“That being the frogs and toads. She had been communing with them for some time in the course of doing her small-pet séances, you know. It wasn't all that hard for her to figure out how to call them forth, en masse as it were.”

Dr. Brockheimer gasped.

“I don't believe what I'm hearing!” she cried. “This is . . . this is . . . wonderful!”

Nan turned to Dr. Brockheimer and scowled.

“Easy for you to say, Miss PhD expert and all. You don't have to deal with these things in real life, do you? For you, this is all just grist for your academic mill. Do you even
have
a garden, Dr. Brockheimer? A personal garden?”

“Yes, yes, I do have a garden,” said Dr. Brockheimer, clenching her jaw tightly and thrusting out her chin defiantly. “I grow vegetables. Organic vegetables.”

A gasp went up from the group. Shirelle looked away. Mary blushed. Nan looked as if she had just been slapped across the face with a gauntlet, and was mulling over her choice of weapons for a duel. Then, a look of intense pity crossed her face. The poor, misguided dear, she thought. She thinks growing vegetables is gardening. Ha!

“We're all about beauty here, Dr. Brockheimer. Not eating. Not
farming.
Agriculture is all well and good, but you are among flower growers here. George dabbled a while back with some radishes and one or two leafy things, but that was George. My goodness, if Dr. Sproot were here, even she'd be absolutely aghast.”

“That's right, she would be,” said Marta.

“Ah, well,
vive la différence,
as the French would say,” said Nan, suddenly perky and forgiving, as she always was on seeing that she had said something hurtful. “So, Marta, is it safe to say that Dr. Sproot didn't accomplish all she wanted to, that being the utter destruction of our gardens?”

“Yes,” said Marta. “That's partly because Edith and I were there, and partly because Dr. Sproot is a novice at this sort of thing, and not very good at it yet. That's why you're seeing patches of places where your flowers are doing fine or are just slightly damaged.”

“So . . . the blue fairy light.”

“Yep,” Marta said proudly. “That was us. You can keep the candle, by the way.”

“What happens when Dr. Sproot fully develops her powers?”

“A night in the pokey and some long overdue psychiatric evaluation might cure her of any need for further action on that front. Edith intends to watch her, too. She said she's seen some ominous signs that Dr. Sproot's powers are growing. As you can probably guess, she isn't the kind of person who'd let a few scruples get in the way of her evil ambitions. We're a little worried. Let's just hope the authorities keep her under lock and key for a while.”

Marta went on to explain how Dr. Sproot was now Edith's landlord and had threatened to foreclose on both her stores unless she served as her witchcraft tutor. Nan gasped. Dr. Brockheimer listened, stunned, her mouth agape.

“She missed a few payments,” Marta said. “I think I can loan her enough to get her over the hump. She can pay me back when she and Felix land back on their feet. I've told the Rose Maidens about it. They're trying to work out a no-interest loan to pay off all Edith's debts to Dr. Sproot. They'd do almost anything to make sure she gets foiled in her evil designs.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

Everyone looked at Dr. Brockheimer as if she were a four-year-old offering to replace the roof, fix the furnace, and install a central-air-conditioning unit, all in the same day.

“Uh, no,” said an embarrassed Shirelle. Nan smiled consolingly and took Dr. Brockheimer's hand.

“There's no need for you to get caught up in our little weirdness here,” she said. “Let's you and I stick to our cross-cultural communications project . . . because I have every intention of teaching you how to talk to plants.”

 

Shirelle was working the front yard, and Nan the backyard that afternoon when George pulled into the garage. He soon appeared at the patio table carrying a bottle of Sagelands and two wineglasses.

“Kind of early for you to be getting off, isn't it?” said a sweaty Nan, pulling off her gloves and depositing her hand tools in their woven-wood tool basket. “Not too early for a glass of the nectar of the gods, however.” George placed a half-filled wineglass in front of her as she plopped down into one of the patio chairs.

“I certainly need this,” she said. “So many dead things to dig out and toss in the compost, to say nothing of all the wounded who need to be watered and fertilized. It's like a battleground, George. And Shirelle is having to dig out all the hybrid teas and most of the delphinium. Awful! Mary's at work, of course.”

George nodded morosely as Nan drained her glass of Sagelands.

“Uh, George, is it too delicate of me to ask what you're doing home so early, and why you look so downtrodden? Oh, and why you've barely touched your Sagelands?”

“I got fired.”

“Ah,” said Nan, uncharacteristically refilling her own glass, and spilling a few drops in the process. “Oh, clumsy me. George, I'm going to leave all the refilling to you from now on. Fired, huh? As in you can never go back to work there and earn a paycheck?”

“That's generally what getting fired means, yes.”

“Why? I thought you were tearing it up with sales, advice, and all that. A regular bird-stuff entrepreneur.”

“I was. But there was apparently one little problem.”

A sudden, shocking thought occurred to Nan.

“George, you weren't dipping into the till, were you?”

“Most certainly not! What do you take me for, Nan-bee? I'm not a thief. I am, however, as you well know, a bit of a tippler.”

“I do know that. But I also know that there are loads of tipplers out there who manage to keep their jobs, tippling being quite harmless when kept in its proper place.... George, you got caught drinking on the job!”

“I did, yes. But it's not what you think. I had organized a little wine break for the staff. Instead of a coffee break mid-afternoon, we'd have a wine break. I took our own bottles of Sagelands, so no company funds were involved. The rest of the staff seemed to like the idea, so, at three o'clock, out came the wineglasses. The customers didn't seem to mind. Well, perhaps one or two did, because today we got a surprise visit from the owner, who, shall we say, caught us in the act. We were interrogated; I was fingered as the instigator and fired on the spot.”