A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [104]
“I just wish the sun would shine again,” Bridget said, searching through a book on horticulture. “It’s the grayness I can’t stand. Do you know if we’re supposed to do anything to the raspberry bushes for the winter?”
If they had thought about it at all, they had all imagined winter as a time of rest and respite, of baking brownies on a snowy day, sitting before the fire with a book, soaking in a bubble bath, and curling up in bed beneath a downy quilt while the big old house stood sturdy against the storms that raged outside. In reality, it took a lot of wood to keep the fireplaces cozy, even with the gas heaters, and someone had to haul in the wood and sweep up the ashes. Brownies would have been nice, but Ida Mae had confiscated the kitchen in order to make her fruitcakes, and they didn’t dare complain because with all the fruitcake batter they sneaked during the day no one had much interest in brownies. The house was indeed sturdy, but it was big and the windows were only single-paned, and bubble baths weren’t nearly as much fun as they might have been in a house with a little more insulation and few less cross-drafts.
And then came the morning when Bridget turned on the burner to heat the pancake griddle, and nothing happened. After a frantic check of all the house’s various switches and gauges, Cici came in from outside, blowing on her fingers, and reported, “The propane tank is empty. We’ll have to get someone out to fill it today.”
Bridget stared at her, aghast. “We just had it filled last month!”
Cici nodded. “Good thing we can still heat with wood.”
“But that cost us two thousand dollars!”
“It’s a big house,” agreed Cici, looking unhappy. “And trying to keep it warm isn’t easy.”
“But—we can’t spend two thousand a month on propane! That’s not even counting the cost of electricity for lighting and the water pump and—”
Cici just sighed. “I know. I guess we didn’t count on that.”
It turned out there was a lot they hadn’t counted on, not the least of which was how much preparation was required to winterize a farm. The leaves had to be raked and the constant rain of twigs and sticks that fell from the trees had to be gathered for kindling. Shrubbery and fruit trees had to be pruned. The flower beds had to be cut back and the vegetable garden plowed under (Farley: ten dollars). The roses had to be pruned and mulched and the concrete garden ornaments had to be sealed. The outdoor water system had to be drained, the faucets covered, and the pipes that led to the house had to be insulated and wrapped with heat tape. The wisteria had to be cut back, and the grapevines tied. And then, of course, there were the outbuildings.
Cici was determined to get the barn weathertight for the livestock, despite the fact that the sheep had survived at least one winter with nothing more than the lean-to in the meadow, and the deer presumably had managed with even less. J&J Lumber delivered an alarming stack of plywood, six-by-sixes, roofing paper, and shingles, and Cici ran an extension cord for her circular saw from the workshop to the barn. Piece by piece, she replaced rotten siding, repaired sagging hinges and broken latches, and shored up fallen beams. Every night she gave a cheerful report about how well the work was coming and how much she enjoyed it, but Bridget and Lindsay were not fooled.
Lori had not called, and every attempt Cici made to reach her daughter went straight to voice mail. Once upon a time, in another life, Cici had exorcized her anxiety with a cell phone and a BlackBerry. Now she did it with a hammer and nails.
And then one day Lindsay came into the kitchen where the other two were warming their hands before the fire after a morning of dragging limbs out of the yard in a bitter wind. The expression on her face was strained. “That was Reverend Holland on the phone,” she said, with a vague, uncertain gesture back toward the foyer where the telephone was located. “He thought we’d want to know—since we’d asked before, and