A Year on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [58]
Cici and Bridget followed him out to the porch curiously, and in a moment Lindsay, adjusting the towel around her shoulders, cautiously joined them. Sam led the way to the side of the house, and stopped. He didn’t have to say anything. As one, the women drew in a breath.
The garden, which Bridget had so painstakingly cultivated all spring and summer, which they had protected from the hedgerow thief and marauding sheep, was in shambles. Proud stalks of corn had been crushed as though by a thresher. Poles and pole beans were tumbled together in a tangle. Tomato plants were sheared off at the roots; squash and melons decapitated. In the midst of the ruins sat the lawn mower, looking like a tank in the aftermath of a battle.
“Oh . . . my,” said Bridget softly.
No one had anything to add to that.
A gentle rain began to fall at dusk, tapping on the porch roof and pinging in the gutters, smelling like sweet hay and earth. Greedy birds fluttered back and forth between the feeders and the poplar tree, bright yellow and deep indigo finches, bossy red cardinals, black-and-white chickadees, storing up reserves against the time when the weather would be too wet to fly. The mist muted the colors of the landscape to a dusky gray green, broken in spots by groupings of pastel hollyhocks and proud white phlox in their formal flower beds. Rolling meadow faded into foggy mountains, which faded into cool gray sky.
The women gathered on the porch for their evening ritual, comfortable in cotton drawstring shorts and tank tops without bras, their hair caught up off their necks with elastic bands and short strands sticking out willy-nilly. Their feet were bare, and their makeup, such as it was, long since sweated off. During the day, when the workmen were around, they tended to wear capris or, at the very least, shorts with zippers, and shirts that covered their upper arms. But when the day was done, and they sat splay-legged in their rockers, or with their feet propped up on the railing, sipping wine and watching the evening, it didn’t matter whether their armpits were shaved or their varicose veins were showing. They were at home.
“Funny,” observed Cici, rocking back and forth. “It kind of makes you think how it must have been a hundred years ago, sitting on this very porch, watching the rain. I’ll bet it wasn’t much different from today.”
“I love the colors,” murmured Lindsay. “Like an impressionist painting.”
“I hope the sheep are okay,” Bridget worried.
“They’re sheep,” Cici said. “They were surviving rainy days long before we got here.”
“What if it thunders?”
“Then they’ll stand under a tree.”
“They could get hit by lightning!”
Cici sipped her wine thoughtfully. “I don’t believe,” she said at last, “in all the history of the world, I’ve ever read about a flock of sheep being struck by lightning. Golfers, yes. Sheep, no.”
Lindsay sighed. “I’m awfully sorry about the garden, Bridget.”
Bridget reached across to pat her knee. “Oh, sweetie, it wasn’t your fault. As long as you’re okay, who cares?”
Lindsay, a little drunk on antihistamines, sipped sparkling water and sighed again. “It’s like something out of Little House on the Prairie, you know?”
And when she received nothing but puzzled glances in response, she explained, “You know. Every time those poor people would get a little bit ahead, God would send locusts or hail or a blizzard to wipe out their crops and it would all have been for nothing.”
Bridget nodded sagely, studying her wineglass. “The life of a farmer is never easy.”
Rain dripped. A cardinal landed on the porch rail, feathers ruffled against the rain, and angrily squawked at a chickadee on the feeder. The chickadee darted away, and the cardinal took its place.
Cici said, “We were able to save some of the garden. The herbs will come back. And we’ll have plenty of apples and pears