Swan for the Money: A Meg Langslow Mystery

one, I noted, was pushing a grocery cart full of roses and paraphernalia. Roses, I’d learned, required as much specialized equipment as newborn humans. At least infants eventually learned to take care of themselves.
    Throughout the barn, nearly two dozen exhibitors had set up shop on the long cafeteria tables and were diligently preparing their blooms for the show.
    I glanced at the nearest table, where Mother was working on her entries. However often I’d seen this process, it never failed to astonish me.
    She began by studying the buckets at her feet, each holding a dozen or so varied blooms. She would toy with a bloom or two, frown, and finally pluck one lucky flower from the herd.
    Then she studied every inch of the rose and its foliage, both over and through her reading glasses and then with a magnifying glass, saying, “Hmm” a great many times. Sometimes she would eventually shake her head with a small expression of displeasure and put the rose in a water-filled bucket at the other end of her table. Given how perfect all the roses looked, I initially assumed she was displeased with these flowers because she was itching to do some grooming and couldn’t find anything they needed. After half an hour of watching, though, I realized that the shake of the head meant that even her skills were not enough to rescue the poor, benighted flower before her. But she placed them all very carefully in the discard bucket all the same, making sure their stems reached the water. After all, there was always the chance that the rest of the roses would be even worse, forcing her to return to a previously rejected rose. Thechances of that were much higher given the rain and wind still besieging Caerphilly. Almost all of the exhibitors were muttering about weather damage.
    If a rose passed that first inspection, Mother would attack the leaves. Some she removed, while others she trimmed down to a smaller, neater size, using deckle-edged scissors, to imitate the natural serrations along the leaf edges. Any brown spots or irregularities were also snipped away with the deckle-edged scissors. Once she was sure the leaves were in optimal condition, she laboriously buffed each one until it shone like a freshly polished shoe.
    “Wouldn’t a little wax have the same effect with less work?” I’d asked once, while watching her practice this at home.
    “That’s illegal!” Mother had exclaimed— by which I assumed she meant against the American Rose Society’s rules. “You can take away from the flower, but you can’t add anything!”
    I was glad I’d asked the question when no one was around, not in a crowded prep room like today’s.
    Mother was now in phase two— cleaning up the rose itself with tweezers, tiny brushes, Q-tips, little sponge-ended makeup applicators, and a tiny bottle of compressed air.
    Soon, she’d nod with satisfaction and begin the final phase— grooming the petals. As with the leaves, some petals she’d pluck out entirely, but more often she would trim the edges of certain petals, using nail scissors or even a scalpel from Dad’s medical bag to remove discolorations, irregularities, or other blemishes completely invisible from six feet away where I sat. When all the petals were as perfect as art and nature could make them, she would begin teasing the flower more fully intobloom, again using her Q-tips, makeup brushes, and tiny bits of sponge.
    “Why don’t you just pick roses that are already open?” I’d asked Mother the first time I’d watched the process.
    “Because you can’t unbloom a rose,” she said. “You can coax a half open rose to open more, but if you pick them already open to the right degree, more often than not, they’ll be too fully open by the time the judges see them.”
    I knew from my work on the program that there was a category for open roses “with stamens prominently showing,” but Mother didn’t seem too excited about it.
    “You know why, right?” Rob had said, when I mentioned it.
    “Probably because the roses in the open category aren’t eligible to win Queen of the Show,” I said.
    “Nah, it’s deeper than that,” Rob said. “Aren’t the stamens what produce the pollen? It’s all about sex. The open rose category is like full frontal nudity for plants. No wonder she disapproves.”
    He might even be right. All I knew was that Mother saved her deepest sighs for when she had to consign a promising bloom to the open category.
    Apparently it wasn’t