51. Spotlight on Crepuscular Meadows: Competing gardens
Created | Updated Aug 7, 2020
51. Spotlight on Crepuscular Meadows: Competing gardens
Mrs. Worthington lived next door to Mrs. Maxiver. They had been rival gardeners for as long as anyone could remember.
The first week of August had come to an end, and very few roses were blooming in Mrs. Maxiver's garden. She didn't go in for roses that came out with repeated periods of blooming through the Summer. Granted, her yellow roses had just put out a second crop of blossoms, and they were lovely.
Mrs. Worthington carefully planned her garden for plants with different blooming schedules. The phlox and daffodils could be counted on for color in May, followed by roses and irises, then coreopsis and early Coneflowers, followed by the later Coneflowers and Shasta daisies, until now the black-eyed Susans were there in all their splendor. Oh, the writer forgot about the various different kinds of lilies. Some of the daylilies, with a little coaxing, could be induced to bloom more or less constantly. Spirea, once it got started, always seemed to have a few bundles of tiny pink blossoms. Likewise Spiderwort, in purple or white, depending on the cultivar.
Mrs. Maxiver's only concession to through-season color was the large planter of petunias on her porch. This needed to be watered regularly.
Goldenrod bloomed in the backyards of both women's houses, but it didn't count. It was a weed. Likewise clover and dandelions. These were insignificant to humans, but the bees never complained.
Also in Mrs. Worthington's backyard was a large cluster of common milkweed, which sported large pods right now. Monarch butterflies danced round it in rapture.
Except for the petunias and the black-eyed Susans, the only other flower worth mentioning was sunflowers.
The asters were getting pretty tall now, and eventually the Chrysanthemums and Montauk daisies would put their seal on the end of the season. Then it would be time to start bringing the gardening tools and planters in for the Fall.
Although the two women were rivals, they did agree on one thing: Crepuscular Meadows was a dead zone where flower gardening was concerned. There was no flower show in June. Groundskeepers at Clematis Station seemed to have little imagination.
Mr. De la Tourette smiled when either of the women collared him with their lament about gardening know-how in the town. He would also shrug. Sometimes he would ask Mrs Maxiver if she realized how fortunate she was to have a son who had a greenhouse and some expertise with plants.
"When you hire a groundkeeper to make your place look nice, the work will actually be done by low-paid workers who have little incentive to give that extra little bit," he would say. "Clematis Station had someone exceptional, and that set the tone for what came later. Why don't you try to start a garden club? You could have weekly or monthly meetings."
But neither Mrs. Maxiver nor Mrs. Worthington were interested. They wanted to be exceptions that stood, not leaders who inspired other to possibly outdo them.
Oh, well.
