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 and Part II is here. Enjoy!

Cradling her favorite garden clippers in her arms, Ruth Goodwin backed up slowly so that she could judge the impact of her assault on her hedge of Magic Carpet spirea. Most of its cotton candy-colored blooms had gone by but there were still a few in their best pink, and she wanted to make sure they were on display for when the garden judges arrived. For the first time in many years, winning the best-in-show trophy at the Carding Home and Garden Show was important to her.

She darted forward and SNIP went another dead blossom. Then SNIP SNIP and two more fell into her weed bucket.

There, as perfect as it was gonna get.

She glanced at the sky though it didn’t look any different than it had ten minutes ago. Blue from horizon to horizon, a serious break in the rain that had drenched the area for days. After such a drippy start to the summer, the idea of watering her flowers seemed rather strange but she needed to check. She snapped off her gardening glove to slip a bare finger under the mulch to check the soil moisture. An earthworm glistened by, his morning repose interrupted by her probing.

“Sorry,” Ruth muttered as she hastened to cover him up. “Sorry.” Then she sighed. Who was she kidding. Even though her yard was a riot of color—pink spirea, yellow evening primrose, white valerian and elderberries, and red bee balm—no one would ever make the mistake of describing the Goodwin gardens as organized.

Ruth loved everything about the botanical world…except maybe poison ivy. But she loved living in it, not dominating it.

“Oh well,” she said as she tossed her tools into their bucket. “Either Edie or Agnes will win and that’s all right.”

A car rolled by slowly just as Ruth closed her front door to fix herself a cup of tea. From inside the car, G.G. Dieppe scanned Ruth’s yard. True, there was a lot in bloom. And true, it did look very pretty…but only from a distance. Even from the road, G.G. spotted some weediness along the edges of a circular raised bed.

“Hmph, no one’s going to find any weeds in my gardens,” she sniffed to herself. “They are perfect. The best that money can buy.”

Ruth watched through the lace curtains on her front windows as G.G. drove on.

“She just left,” she texted Agnes. “Probably headed your way.”

It had taken a few years but Agnes Findley had finally turned her partner Charlie Cooper’s scruffy yard into a virtual Eden. The yellow blooms of spring had given way to the red of the climbing roses that sheltered the sunny end of their screened-in porch. Her hosta hedge, each plant placed so that its leaves complimented the plants on either side, was at the height of perfection.

Her collection of colorful pots added height and wonder to the landscape, and the hens and chicks lining the walkway to their front door had just started to share their peach-colored flowers.

They were Agnes’s specialty.

She grinned as she read Ruth’s text. “Do you think I should stand in the front yard and wave?” she asked Charlie as they watched G.G.’s car from behind the hedge of limelight hydrangeas that divided their front yard from the back.

Charlie nearly choked up his coffee. “I thought the idea was to be stealthy about your spying ways,” he said.

“Oh, I know. It’s just that I find that woman so irritating,” Agnes said, tapping her foot.

“And you don’t want her to win,” Charlie said.

“Yeah, that too.” They watched G.G. crawl by their house, her neck extended to its full length. “Gawd, how nosy can she be? Ah, there she goes. She must have found some imperfection. Well, so be it. At least Edie or Ruth will win, and that’s fine.”

“You’d better text Edie to let her know G.G.’s coming,” Charlie said, trying to mask his grin. He couldn’t remember when he’d enjoyed a competition more. Who knew that watching gardeners could be so entertaining?

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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.