Organic Gardening for Beginners

Maria Thomas

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They’re sent away for a couple of days so Caleb can move in, their mother’s relief palpable as she kisses them goodbye. Behave for your grampa, she says. Merry does like to help Grampa tend the garden, likes the clean, organic scent of soil as he turns it with his spade. Likes that he speaks equably to her as they dig, and hoe, and weed.

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Grampa points to a bed of plants at the far side of the lawn. Their leaves are chlorophyll green and shaped like a man’s palm, spoked lifelines stretching out to fluted edges, floral trumpets loud and voluntary. He flips one of the leaves, the underside obsidian black with insects moving slowly like lava. Aphids, he says, they love nasturtiums.

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He calls the flowers a trap crop. He plants them here, he says, at the margins of the land, to attract insects away from the roses. Sacrificing the brilliant, brass horns to spare the delicate, rosy maidens in their crinolines.

 

Across the garden, Merry sees Leonora waltzing, spinning eyes closed, as if her prince has come.

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In the kitchen at home, days later, Caleb’s eyes are dark, compounded, watching silently as Merry and Leonora eat, play, get ready for bed. Their mother hovers at the periphery, her laughter too bright, her chatter too loud. She already smells of gin and regret. 

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That night Merry cultivates their room. Plants Leonora in the far bed obscured by darkness, makes sure her own bed is spotlighted by the moon through the open door.  She waits at the margins of their garden, protecting her rose from the imminent insect swarm.