by Sonja Hakala

The flu was late making the rounds in Carding, Vermont this year. It’s usually come and gone by mid-April but this year, it timed its inconvenient arrival for early May, just when folks wanted to get outside to clean up their yards. Ruth Goodwin nicknamed this year’s viral malady the “kinda-sorta flu” because you kinda feel like you have a cold and you feel sorta achey. The overall impact on those under the influence of the virus is a week of extreme lethargy, a cough, and a slight sore throat. So everyone’s been drinking pots of herbal tea laced with echinacea in between naps.

Edie Wolfe was one of the first Carding-ites to succumb so she’s now on the healing side of the equation. She’s on day six of her self-imposed regimen of fluids and sleep. She’s read three books so far but can’t remember any of them, consumed the last of her candied ginger from Christmas (a present from her sister Rosie), and now she’s pulled a comfy chair up to her front window so she can watch the sun play with the puddles at the end of her driveway.

Of course you know what happens when you sit still. You start to notice stuff.

“Hmph,” Edie said as she leaned forward to run a forefinger over the windowsill. “You can tell I haven’t dusted in here for a while.” She moseyed out to the kitchen for her tote of cleaning products, a sponge, and a bucket of warm water.

After the windowsills got a thorough cleaning, she noticed the top of the honey-colored wainscoting. As she nudged her chair to one side to reach a far corner, Edie realized she hadn’t vacuumed since catching the flu. So the vacuum came out of the closet.

Before too long, she was moving furniture to get at all those hard-to-reach places normally hidden from public view. That’s when she realized that her cocker spaniel, Nearly, had left nose prints all over the lower pane of the storm door on the front of their house. Being but a wee dog, Nearly loved nothing more than sitting in the sun that streamed in the front door of the home he shared with Edie.

As she washed the windows, knowing full well that her dog would lay down new signatures as soon as she was done, Edie’s gaze drifted out to the porch that wrapped around the northwest corner of her house. Some of the accumulated detritus of her autumn cleanup was still there, abandoned when the winter’s first storm hit Carding.

She sighed, a roll of paper towels in her hand. It was a truism widely acknowledged in northern New England that whatever is still outside when the first snowflakes fall will still be there when gardening season begins.

“I should have taken that stuff out to the garden shed,” she told Nearly. “Do you think I should do that now?” The little dog’s tail fluttered with excitement. It had been days since he’d had a proper walk and he was up for anything that encouraged Edie to step outside. “Okay. I guess we can do that. I’ll get my coat.”

Over the course of a year, the daytime temperature in Vermont can range from a very frosty 20 degrees below zero to a sweltering day in the 90s with humidity that makes it almost impossible to breathe. This wide disparity means that the terms “warm” and “cold” are relative. In January, anything above freezing is considered warm. In mid-August, anything below 65 is “pretty cold for this time of year.”

Today, at the beginning of May—a time of the year infamous for its unpredictability—the thermometer in Edie’s kitchen hovered around the 65-degree mark, and with the clear sky and light breeze, it felt positively balmy outdoors.

She zipped up her work jacket as she stepped outside, sniffing the air for that first tantalizing tease of spring, the scent of wet earth. Nearly hopped down the front steps, and turned to look at Edie. When she did not follow, he hopped back up.

“Sorry, little guy, I don’t think I’m up for a walk today. Be grateful we’re outside.”

She contemplated the detritus on her porch. It was mostly flowerpots, some emptied of soil, some not. “And there lay the dream of flowers,” Edie whispered. It was a favorite expression of her grandmother.

In addition to the flowerpots, there was a short stack of five-gallon pails, useful for all sorts of projects. Every household in Carding had at least four of them. Next she unearthed a rake, its wooden handle splintered at its halfway point.

“Oh that’s right. I was going to replace this. I wonder if Andy has put out the garden tools at the store,” Edie said.

Nearly’s ears pricked up at the word store. He hopped down the front steps, turned to look at an unmoving Edie, and then hopped back up, albeit with a lot less enthusiasm.

“Hey Edie. Good to see you up and about,” Ruth Goodwin called from her infamous yellow Jeep. Her beagle R.G. added his greetings for Nearly. “How are you feeling?”

“Better now that the sun is shining and it’s really, finally spring. How soon do think we can get into our gardens?”

Ruth pointed at the ground near Edie’s feet. A clot of white violets basked in the sun beneath the bare branches of a sleeping lilac bush. Edie gasped with pleasure. 

“Oh, I’d say it’ll be another another ten days before we can dig in the dirt,” Ruth said. “It’s supposed to be clear skies all week, you know, so the ground will get a good chance to dry out. Hey, I thought you were going to replace that rake’s handle last fall.”

“Yeah, you know how it is. The best laid plans…”

“Well I was just at the Coop and Andy was putting out the new gardening tools when I was there.”

“Really?” Edie shaded her eyes to look across the green at Cooper’s General Store. “Now that does sound inviting. This kind of weather makes my fingers itch for working in the yard.” She looked down at Nearly, his face all smiles. “Well, it probably would be okay if we took a short walk. What do you think?”

The cocker’s tail disappeared in a blur.

“Well, will you look at that,” Ruth said. “Just when you thought it couldn’t go any faster.”

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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 the 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.