At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [108]
On the second Sunday in May the ladies came down for breakfast and were greeted by garden roses in a cut glass vase on the table, orange juice and sugared strawberries at each place setting, and, through the open kitchen windows, the breeze of a balmy May morning and the musical sound of splashing water.
“Happy Mother’s Day!” Lori exclaimed. In her hands she held a beautifully glazed pecan coffee cake on a footed cake platter, and she had surrounded it with rose petals.
“Don’t worry,” Noah assured them as they exclaimed over the cake and the table, “she didn’t make it. She bought it yesterday at the bakery in town.”
Lori gave him a dark look as she set the cake on the table, which he ignored. “Come on,” he insisted. “Let’s show them.”
“They have to have breakfast first,” Lori argued. “Everyone knows you have breakfast first, then presents.”
Ida Mae came in, tying her apron. “What’s all this fuss? You kids have been banging around in here for an hour.”
“Happy Mother’s Day, Ida Mae!” Lori said happily. “You just sit down and relax. We’re making breakfast this morning.”
“Not in my kitchen, you’re not!” she returned in real alarm.
“Presents,” said Cici quickly, hoping to distract Lori. “Did you say something about presents?”
“Come on,” Noah said, barely able to disguise his excitement as he held open the back door. “It’s this way.”
“Oh, okay!” Lori pushed ahead of him to lead the way. “Maybe just this once, presents before breakfast.”
The ladies walked in their slippers and robes across the dewy grass, and they could see the spray of the fountain as soon as they rounded the corner onto the flagstone path.
“Oh, Lori!” exclaimed Lindsay. “You did it! You got the fountain running again.”
“Not exactly by herself,” Noah interjected.
“So that’s what you two have been working on so hard these last few days!” Bridget said, pretending surprise.
“But that’s not the best part,” Lori insisted. She grasped her mother’s hand and pulled her along. “Wait until you see.”
The rose garden, just coming into full bloom with its showy pink and yellow and scarlet velvet blossoms, formed a partial screen as the path wound around and opened, at last, onto the pool and fountain area. All three women stopped, and caught their breath, pressing their hands together in a moment of sheer delight.
“Oh my goodness,” said Lindsay softly. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“Lori . . . Noah . . .” Bridget shook her head in wonder. “It’s just like I imagined.”
Cici stared at Lori. “You did this? With your own hands?”
“I helped,” Noah reminded her, a trifle belligerently.
“Not that much,” Lori shot back, then relented. “Okay, he helped.” And finally she modified it to, “We did it together.”
This prompted Noah to admit, “She did a pretty good job, for a girl.”
The pool was ten feet in radius and highlighted in the center by a fountain that sprayed a delicate bell of water three feet into the air. Deep purple water lilies drifted across the surface, which was punctuated by delicate sprays of green and lavender water grasses. The circumference was trimmed with a perfectly even and highly polished surround of river stone, and around it a six-foot flagstone sitting area had been cleared. At one end was the statue of a little girl with a flower basket that Lindsay and Cici had moved to the rose garden last year, now returned to its rightful place. At another was a hand-crafted wooden bench, stained and sealed against the weather. And all around the sitting area were carefully mulched plantings of colorful primrose, variegated coleus, pink begonias, and even a small weeping willow tree. It was a secret garden in the midst of a rose garden.
“Well, will you look at that.” Ida Mae, curious, had come up behind them. “It’s just like it was in the old days.”
“Almost,” Noah corrected. “The willow tree, she needs to grow some. And we don’t know what happened to that bench that was under it, so we had to build a new one.”
Cici stared. “You built that?”
“It