He'd planted something at regular intervals along the fencing. She could see tender young plants and the carefully packed mulch around them. She imagined he'd done the digging there himself.
Some sort of trailing flowering vine, she supposed, that would, in time, grow and tumble color over the fence.
A patient man, Byron De Witt, she mused. One who would enjoy watching those vines grow and bloom and tangle year after year.
And she knew he would experience a quiet satisfaction when the first bud blossomed. Then he would tend it. The man enjoyed tending things.
Holding the Dream
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No matter your aesthetic preference — from formal to informal, straight lines to wavy borders — you can garden in a way that honors and supports wildlife and the land that intersects with your landscape.
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She made four trips, her Glock against her hip, her dog trotting at her heels before she began to lay out the plan she’d sketched out on chilly winter nights.
The cardinal flowers and coneflowers, the sweet-scented heliotrope mixed with airy lantana, the flow of verbena, the charm of New England asters, the elegance of oriental lilies for nectar. She had the sunflowers and hollyhocks and milkweed for host plants to tempt the adults to lay their eggs, the young caterpillars to feed.
She arranged, rearranged, grouped, regrouped, gradually veering away from her initial, somewhat mathematical layout when she found the less rigid and exact pleased her eye.
In case, she took out her phone and took pictures from several angles before she picked up her trowel to dig the first hole.
An hour later, she stepped back and checked her progress before going inside for ice to add to the tea she’d left steeping in the sun.
“It’s going to be beautiful,” she told Bert. “And we’ll be able to sit on the porch and watch the butterflies. I think we’ll draw hummingbirds, too. I’ll love seeing all this grow and bloom, the butterflies and birds. We’re putting down roots, Bert. The deeper they go, the more I want them.”
The Witness