by Sonja Hakala

Good morning and welcome back to Carding, Vermont where the competition for the first place trophy in the garden club’s Home and Garden Tour is heating up. If you missed Part I of The Primrose Challenge, please feel free to click on this link to take you there. Enjoy!

Now it’s a truth widely acknowledged that inheritances can tear families apart. But not so with the brothers Cooper, Andy and Charlie. They owned Cooper’s General Store in Carding, Vermont jointly, just the way they received it from from their Dad, and after a lot of talking, they had settled into an amicable division of labor when it comes to its day-to-day operations.

Andy enjoyed the hands-on part of it all, making displays, ordering the seasonal items, relating to the customers (or not, as the case may be), and managing the employees.

Charlie, for his part of the deal, takes care of the paperwork of the operation—watching over the accounts, calculating the correct profit margins on the items sold in the store, and taking care of all the legal ins and outs of running a small business in Vermont (of which there are many).

Each brother thought he had the better part of the deal so they were both content.

Charlie, now that he is semi-retired from his legal practice, makes a habit of ambling through the back door of the Coop about mid-morning on just about every week day. He pours himself coffee from the community urn, nods and says hello to anyone who passes by, and then heats up the store’s computer to go through the finances.

Sooner or later, Andy shows up and after discussing the latest Red Sox game or the weather, the brothers get down to business.

But today, Charlie skipped their detour into baseball to talk about the numbers on his meticulously kept spread sheets.

“What is this?” he asked, pointing to a rather large figure. “We’ve never sold that much compost, mulch, and potting soil in the whole history of the store. Is that figure correct?”

Andy chuckled, gave his tea a good stir so that the honey in it was evenly distributed throughout the mug instead of pooling at the bottom, and then sat down next to his “baby” brother.

“I’ve discovered a secret weapon in the town’s gardening wars,” he confided.

A small smile snaked over Charlie’s mouth when he recognized the onset of one of his brother’s storytelling moments.

“Do tell.”

“It’s name is G.G. Dieppe.” Andy sucked in a big slurp of tea.

“Anthony’s Dieppe’s wife? The upper crust of the upper crust in Mount Merino Village?”

“Yep, one and the same. It seems she’s decided to enter the Home and Garden Tour with the idea of winning the best-in-show trophy,” Andy said. He slurped some more while waiting for Charlie to catch up.

“Ah, so that’s why Agnes is whirling around in our yard from dawn to dusk like a mad dervish,” Charlie said with a chuckle. Charlie’s life partner is Agnes Findley, widely acknowledged as the most meticulous gardener in Carding. “Do you know, she hardly came in long enough for supper last night. And I’d made her favorite pasta dish.”

Andy nodded. “Yep, they’ve all gone mad this year. Personally, I don’t think Edie or Ruth or Agnes cares if they win or not just so long as this G.G. character doesn’t.”

Charlie looked down at the spread sheets on the desk. “It’s been mighty good for business.”

“Yeah, and most of that is G.G. Dieppe. She’s bought more compost, potting soil, and fertilizer than Edie, Ruth and Aggie combined,” Andy said. “I don’t think the woman’s ever picked up a trowel in her life but she’s determined to win the home and garden trophy. Every time she walks into the store, she just keeps saying that ‘all it takes is money.'”

The brothers Cooper shared a blue-eyed stare and then they both started to laugh. “Oh, this is going to be so much fun to watch,” Charlie said.

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The Carding Chronicles are short stories written by author Sonja Hakala about the Vermont town that no one can quite find on a map. They feature the characters in her four Carding novels.

The Carding books are available from Amazon and the Chronicles appear here, on this website, every Monday. Hope to see you next week for Part III of The Primrose Challenge.