Mulch ado about nothing

the late fall. Tearing out things that didn’t work out, planting bulbs, and mulching the delicate things. Then I have all winter to plan the next spring and summer without any work at all. Just waiting for plant catalogs to drool over.”
    The rest of the group was gathering at the side of the pool. Miss Winstead disappeared for a moment and came back with tiny packets of fish food, which the goldfish and koi greedily gobbled up, mouths agape as if they were starving. Arnold Waring smiled at their antics and so did Charles Jones, who quickly ruined the smile by saying, “Didn’t I say Miss Winstead’s garden and mine were very different?”
    He sounded so proud of this, as if he had no sense of how much the rest of the class loved Miss Winstead’s garden. Or any concept of how dreary his own was.
    Stefan Eckert looked as if he were dreaming, his eyes half-closed with contentment. Even Ursula was impressed. “This is what I’d like my yard to look like,“ she said, quietly for once.
    Dr. Eastman said, “Fine work, Miss Winstead. How long has this garden been here?“
    “Only five years come fall,“ she replied. “Not counting the two years I spent figuring out where I wanted the walls and walks and hedges.“
    “That’s the true measure of a real gardener,“ Dr. Eastman said. “The patience to wait, the planning ahead...“
    “And the pure mean-spiritedness to rip up anything or anyone that doesn’t work out,“ Miss Winstead said.
    Dr. Eastman paled, but didn’t respond.

Eighteen

    “Boy, that was scary ,“ Jane said as she hoisted herself into Shelley’s station wagon.
    “Aren’t you glad her remarks weren’t aimed at us?“ Shelley said, making a little shiver. “If I’d been Dr. Eastman, I’d be installing a new security system right now. We better hurry home. I’ve got to take the girls to their cooking lesson. They’re starting a couple days late, but they can catch up in the next round of classes. The teacher says she covers the same thing the first day of each session, but after that it’s different recipes.“
    “Does this mean they can take lessons the whole rest of the summer!“ Jane exclaimed. “And by the way, what did this first group of lessons cost? I need to reimburse you.“
    “Only five bucks a day,“ Shelley said. “But we had to pay for the days they missed.”
    After she’d pocketed Jane’s check, Shelley abandoned her and gathered up their daughters and drove off to fetch the third girl, Katie’s best friend, Jenny. Jane was glad she had a good excuse not to drive a summer car pool. As soon as Todd was old enough to drive, she’d be through with car pools, except for blind kids she drove to their special school once a week. She’d once filled in for one of the other women who’d broken her arm two years earlier and was getting time off in kind until she could drive again.
    Enough of thinking about the distant future. The immediate future loomed.
    She was going to have to do some work before the nursery guys delivered her “instant“ garden. She went out the back door to find the pooper-scooper in the garage. She left it by the patio table and spent a full fifteen minutes nudging along the trash bin onto the patio. She’d always figured poop scooping was somehow inherently a male job. She’d always made Mike or Todd do it. But today neither of them was around. And even Katie was gone. Not that Katie would acknowledge such a request.
    In her travels around the yard, she got the tip of the crutch stuck in a chipmunk hole, and put it down once on a fallen branch that rolled away under her. But she managed to stay upright while she quartered the grass. Max and Meow, fresh from hunting mice in the field behind her house, abandoned their favorite activity to hang around with her.
    “You guys are good cats. You do your business somewhere else.”
    Max tried to rub against her leg in appreciation ,but she moved the crutch accidentally and he fled for his life.
    She’d barely wrestled the trash bin back in the garage when a big truck pulled up in front of the house. The first guy out of the truck lowered a plank and dollied off a huge box. “Where do you want this thing, lady?“
    “Is it my fountain? In the middle of the yard, I thought.“
    “It takes electricity. Have you got a really long cord?“ he said.
    She wondered if this was sarcasm or a really stupid idea that sounded all right to him.
    “Oh... no, I don’t. I guess it’ll have to go on