Windrow Garden Page 11

  The caress composed Sally’s mind and it became a clear pool of receptivity. They let the moment carry them closer to each other and to desire as their mouths opened in consuming duet. Sally moved against Nicole, asking with her body when words failed her. Nicole obliged and penetrated past her teeth to the wet, hot tongue that summoned her with flickering suggestions.

  Sally wrapped her arms around Nicole’s shoulders as she pressed her hands against Nicole’s firm-fleshed back in urgency. With insistent fingertips, she begged Nicole to flow through the barrier of flesh, to get closer, to meet and complete as one. She clasped her arms around Nicole’s neck, arched her body at the entreating explorations of Nicole’s hands, and opened herself to the new touch of love.

  Slowly, as if there were no time, no place, no other moment that would ever exist, Nicole and Sally raced to the center of their worlds. Flesh, hearts, and souls touched and flowed together, straining in surrender one to the other. Where need touched, desire kindled fulfillment. Balanced in the moment they slowly moved down into sweet surrender under the sky.

  Sally lifted her voice as her back arched in spasmodic tides of liberation. Her face buried in Nicole’s neck, her muffled calls gushed in the quick cadence of gasping shock waves. Like plunging over Niagara Falls and being mysteriously saved from fatal shores by the rebounding of rippling tributaries, Sally’s consummation coursed through her body.

  Nicole whispered soft, love-shaded words to her, rocked her softly in her arms, and held her. She was happy, hungry still, but satisfied with the radiance she’d spread through Sally and shared in her own flesh.

  They stayed by the pond loving and being loved until the sunlight was traded for shadows and the time came for them to go back to the farmstead.

  On the walk home they touched hands, spoke quietly, looked expectantly at each other, and talked hesitantly about what they were feeling. Everything had changed. There was no more room for independent assumptions about the world. There had been a binding, but neither could speak as to what that might mean. They had no words yet for knowing. They shared one thing, a promise of hope in the days to come.

  At the door of Nicole’s cabin, Sally braved a kiss before leaving. They believed they were alone. Their interest in each other concealed Doug Harkner’s shadow as it crossed the distance between the greenhouse and tool shed when he hurried from the field.

  = Chapter 9 =

  Pests

  Organic gardening or farming requires a balance. In the best of all situations, the use of sprays, dusts, and traps is unnecessary when the host of beneficial predators and parasites reaches a population where they can keep the number of damaging pests at a low or tolerable level. The determinant word in organic gardening is tolerable. Tolerable denotes a state of peaceful life activity for the creatures and bugs on the farm and in the garden where they keep themselves in check. The only price you have to pay is the occasional nibble taken from a few crops. Organic gardening and farming requires a tolerance for minor losses to keep a ready supply of beneficial insects on hand.

  Chemicals are antagonistic to the creation and maintenance of the delicate balance of life in nature and the organic garden. Even nontoxic, homemade concoctions can upset the balance in the soil as their application may pave the way for pest infestation. If you are attempting to maintain the peace and organic health of soil and plants, do not interfere with the damage until it becomes intolerable.

  Prevention is the surest way to avoid insect trouble. Healthy plants and healthy soil are more able to withstand insect harassment than are weak plants.

  An essential way of ensuring healthy pest-resistant plants is to make sure they get a balance of nutrients through the soil. The careful use of natural fertilizers should be maintained throughout the growing season. Use too much or too little, and you will encourage the pests to attack the luscious plants.

  A variety of control mechanisms is available for the intently organic gardener: frequent cultivation, sanitation, planting times of specific plants that thwart their predators, mulching, crop rotation, plowing under infested plants, and many more. Knowledge of your predators and available plant control techniques is the organic gardener’s best guide. Taking advantage of the natural life cycle of the pests is another tried-and-true method of preventing bug problems.

  After a few seasons of experience, you will notice that the same insects appear year after year and the times when they occur. They will live their short little lives and disappear until the next year or until the second brood appears in the same season. Steal the time between insect appearances to plant and harvest your crops before the pests enter their hunger stage. In your garden records, note the kinds of pests that cause the most trouble to the most plants and the time of the year when the damage becomes intolerable. Last but not least, an important tactic for the prevention of pests and the protection of the garden is companion planting.

  Companion planting protects plants with other plants. This method has a number of ways to accomplish the intended benefit. All farms and gardens are better and healthier if they are not forced to endure or survive in a monoculture. Growing row after row or field after field of a pest’s favorite life-sustaining substance is asking for trouble. The chance for infestation and the necessity of resorting to chemicals to save a crop may be avoided if different plants are grown every two or three rows. Inter-planting and varying field plantings will reduce the infestation. Pests can be further discouraged when you intermingle plants that pests can’t stand or tolerate with plants that they do like. One plant can protect and help the other; this is the key to companion planting.

  Groundwork

  Nicole and Sally became as inseparable as their busy work schedules could provide. They met in the late afternoons of the days the restaurant was not open, the late evenings, and the early mornings before the sun came up. Infatuation, desire, and discovery embraced them, and care and caution slipped from their grasp. Old habits of distance and formality evaporated as they bared their lives and their bodies to each other.

  When Sally was not with her, Nicole found herself thinking about her, wondering about the emotions and desire coursing through her mind. If a stray thought did slip in, it was to worry about the possibility of transience in Sally’s gratifying passions. Nicole worked as hard as ever, but the memories of touch and passion playing in her mind overshadowed every task and sent involuntary thrills through her limbs. Unacquainted with the possibility of permanence in a relationship, the joy of their moments together disquieted her mind. Nothing and no one had ever endured beyond an allotted tour of duty. In the Army, she’d had the patent excuse of reassignment; orders and mandates from command had spared her all but the briefest regrets. She had never had to worry about constance, stability, or the misery of regret and departure. So the worries tormented her, and as if they knew she was vulnerable, found her as she luxuriated in her lover’s arms and frustrated her joy.

  She was not used to having nagging concerns about her future or wanting a future with anyone. She wanted a future now. Nicole was the sole agent of her destiny, responsible for where she went, what she needed to do, and where she needed to go. But as free as she was, the arms and desires of another held her. The change in her thinking startled her and made her anxious for what she had never known she wanted.

  Sally’s every sensation, buried desire, and filament of repressed longing found expression in Nicole’s arms. She coaxed long-forgotten memories to the surface and discovered herself.

  Sally’s mind, body, and soul took wing without fear or favor from the world. She knew what she wanted and what she had. In silent promises to herself, she let her desires bare themselves in deeds and compliant whispered words to Nicole. Sally silently promised to share her life and all the time that the universe might grant them together. She promised, knowing that a hundred years would be too little. Work and the running of the farm took on new meaning. They became the means and not the end for creating a life with love. She believed no
thing could or would ever restrain her again.

  * * * *

  As the days and weeks passed, Nicole’s quandary plagued her unquiet mind, and Sally could regard nothing but the face of love before her. Nicole did not know how to share her apprehensions and hid them as best she could from herself. She had to. The guileless rare and open love she had never known that she missed reached for her at every opportunity. Sally’s unabashed, hungering touch made her humble in its power.

  * * * *

  A bit after three thirty-five in the afternoon, Gwynn Marian bounced off the steps of the school bus as it came to its scheduled stop at the end of the long driveway leading toward home. Like a freed prisoner, she squinted at the high June sun as she waved good-bye to other tiny passengers still captive in the yellow container. But summer school and the advanced computer class would be ending soon and she’d be free again until fall.

  Gwynn Marian ran up the driveway and only fleetingly noticed the cars sitting in the parking lot of her mother’s café. She dashed toward her house, intent on changing her clothes before she walked to the café to see if her mother needed any help.

  Inside the house she ran up the stairs, shedding her school clothes as she went. In consideration for her mother, Gwynn Marian remembered to pick up her discarded garments and put them in the clothes hamper before running back down the stairs in her blue jeans and brightly colored blouse. As she raced out the door and into the bright warm air again, she grabbed her favorite hat off a peg on the porch to cover her copper-colored hair and protect her fair skin from overexposure to the sun. She hurried across to the café, feverishly hoping that her mother did not need her help. She wanted to saddle her pony and ride like the wind until it was time for supper.

  Inside the restaurant she scooted past the tables where two propane-truck drivers sat discussing the merits of their occupation. She glanced at the corner table and noticed that Doug Harkner was talking to the banker. She grimaced and hoped her mother hadn’t agreed to start dating the banker again. She knew he’d been pestering her. He’d been stopping by and trying to get her attention for weeks. Gwynn Marian didn’t like him. The feeling had seemed to be mutual from the first time they’d met. He had all too often expressed his opinion that children were a necessary evil and best kept out of sight. She frowned in his direction, but his conversation with Doug so engaged him that he failed to notice her as she passed by the kitchen doorway. She felt relieved. She didn’t want to talk to him, either.

  She sprinted through the wooden swinging door and almost collided with Martha in her haste to find her mother.

  “Careful, girl,” Martha chided.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Marmer. Have you seen my mom?” Gwynn Marian asked when she noticed Martha was the only occupant in the kitchen.

  “Not for an hour or so. And if you find her, would you tell her Mr. Bradley is looking for her?” Martha asked as she pulled two fresh rhubarb pies from the oven.

  “What’s he want?” Gwynn Marian asked poutingly as she pulled a milk carton from the refrigerator and tried to sneak some cookies off a baking sheet.

  “Just came to visit, I guess. Now don’t go ruining your supper,” Martha scolded.

  “You got eyes in the back of your head like my mother,” Gwynn Marian said, putting back all but the one she popped swiftly into her mouth.

  “Comes with age and raising children, dear. You’ll know what I mean when you have your own,” Martha said, chuckling at the wide-eyed expression on Gwynn Marian’s face.

  “See you later, Mrs. Marmer,” she said as she raced out the back door and down the steps to where her pony waited. As she neared the corral, Gwynn Marian called to her pony, and he whinnied his hello back to her. She quickly saddled the little bay, mounted him, and headed for the distant rise of hills.

  Her hair bounced and flew in the wind as Gwynn Marian raced the pony over the dusty dirt and across the tilled fields. The thrust of wind swelled as she urged her pony in merry abandon to the long grasses of summer. She let the pony have his head as she hurried to her secret place. She’d hidden two plastic-wrapped books in the hollow of a tree. Half a mile ahead, near the rough outcrop of sandstone under the sheltering stand of elm, she would graze her pony and read again the enticing stories of The Martian Chronicles.

  Popping over a gentle slope near the old pond, she prepared to turn her pony westward. A sudden flash of white toward the east distracted her. She thought she saw someone walking near the far tree line heading back in the direction of the house. Pulling the pony sharply up from his dash, she brought him to a halt. She looked toward the woods, but the figure had vanished into the shadows. She stared perplexedly at the woods and wondered if she’d imagined the whole thing.

  Gwynn Marian turned in her saddle and started to nudge her pony back toward her intended goal. A startled yelp leaped in her throat as she realized someone was standing on the path in front of her.

  “Miss Windrow,” Nicole said evenly.

  “You scared me,” Gwynn Marian choked.

  “That was not my intention,” Nicole replied. “Are you supposed to be out here by yourself?”

  “Sure,” Gwynn Marian asserted with every ounce of her small dignity. “What are you doing out here?”

  “If you must know,” Nicole said as she reached for the pony’s bridle to stroke his nose, “when I get tired of working, I walk to the pond down here and take a break. It’s my private place, and I like to be there without being disturbed. Is that all right with you?”

  “Of course. I have a secret place, too,” Gwynn Marian confided.

  “Then you know how I feel about it,” Nicole affirmed.

  “Sure, I do,” Gwynn Marian asserted, making a mental note not to go to the pond unless she knew Nicole was still working. “So, my mom says she really likes you. You seem all right. I think it’s nice you are her friend,” Gwynn Marian continued cheerfully.

  “Your mom is a very nice lady. I’m sure she has lots of friends,” Nicole replied as she rubbed the pony’s pink nose.

  “Sure she does. She has lots of lady friends. I think some of them just come by to steal her recipes, but don’t tell her I said that. She’ll get mad. She used to like Mr. Bradley from the bank, but I never did. He talks too loud, and he tried to boss me around. Mamma dated him for a while, but I’m glad she stopped. You know, he told me that if he were my father, he’d see to it I got sent to a girls' school down in the Ozarks,” she babbled without taking a breath. “He called it a finishing school. Said that was what little tomboys needed. Something about getting finished up. Doesn’t matter, though. She says you’re her best friend now,” Gwynn Marian chattered.

  Nicole smiled at the effusive young girl and glanced in the direction Sally had taken back toward the house. They’d managed to steal an hour together, and in spite of Sally’s best intentions she had obviously missed getting back to the café before Gwynn Marian got home.

  “I’d have to agree with you about Mr. Bradley. The idea of sending you away from your mother simply because he doesn’t understand tomboys seems like a lame idea,” Nicole commented.

  “No kidding! I think that’s why Mom stopped seeing him. He was always trying to butt into our business. Like he owned us or something,” Gwynn Marian maintained.

  Nicole refrained from chuckling as a look of pure indignation swept across the child’s fresh face. “So, where are you headed?” Nicole asked gently.

  “To my secret place,” Gwynn Marian responded in quiet tones.

  “I see. Well, I think it’s a fine thing to have a secret place. Everyone should have one. Just be careful with the pony and yourself. It wouldn’t do to have any harm come to you.”

  “I’m careful,” Gwynn Marian protested.

  “Careful? Like riding this pony as though he had wings?” Nicole asked gently as she let go of the pony’s bridle and stepped aside.

  “I’ll be more careful,” Gwynn Marian promised, and she turned the pony to leave.

  “That�
�s the way.”

  “Nicole,” Gwynn Marian said, stopping the horse and looking back. “Do you like my mom?”

  “Yes. Very much.”

  “Good, because she told me she wants you to stay here always. Even if, even if Bill Cornweir gets well.” Gwynn Marian smiled at Nicole. “I told her you could stay in the spare room next to mine,” Gwynn Marian finished as she whipped her pony into a gallop.

  Nicole watched the forthright innocent gallop off across the field and felt breathless at the guileless assertions of trust.

  Nicole went back to her workshop and fairly whistled through her labors until seven-thirty that evening. She was exhausted but happy as she walked toward the cabin. She wanted a long hot shower and knew that her strained muscles would appreciate her efforts if she could manage to get to the cottage door.

  As she rounded the corner of the hay barn, she saw Jake headed in her direction. He waved at her and motioned for her to follow him. She caught up with him as he climbed into the passenger seat of the deuce-and-a-half.