Love in Bloom (30 page)

 

To ensure healthy plants and lots of blooms, make
sure you give your plants enough moisture over the
hot summer months so they don't suffer from heat
stress. Applying a layer of mulch will help plants
retain moisture.

 

For the best blooms on your roses, feed them every
two months from March through October. Avoid
watering at night because it encourages disease.

 

You can pinch out the tips of any perennial for more
blooms. Start in late spring or early summer. Using
your forefinger and thumb, pinch the tips of the
stems. For each pinched stem, two branches will
grow. Don't pinch a flower stem after the buds are
set though, or you'll cut off flower growth rather
than encourage it.

 

SHOWING OFF YOUR BLOOMS IN THE HOUSE

 

To make your flowers last in the vase, add a plantfood
packet (which you can purchase at your local
florist's). Also trim the stems. You don't want any
leaves or debris under the water level. This produces
bacteria that shortens the life of the flower. Change
the water regularly. The cleaner the water, the less
bacteria to shorten the life of the flower. Trim off 1 to
3 inches of the stems when you change the water.
Keep an eye on your vase and make sure you don't
run out of water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A
MBER CALLED MILLIE
the morning after her visit. “I can't talk long,” she said, “but I just wanted to tell you that we have had a major breakthrough over here. It's like a miracle.”

“I'm so happy for you,” said Millie, and Amber could hear the smile in her voice.

“Thanks for being there. You're better than a shrink. I'm working tomorrow. Come on in and have a thank-you latte on me. Oh, Ty's out of the shower. Gotta go.”

Better than a shrink
. Amber certainly had a way of exaggerating, Millie thought as she hung up the phone. But she couldn't help feeling glad, both that her young friend was doing well now and that she'd been able to help. It was good to be needed, good to have someone want to hear what you had to say.

“Who was that?” Debra asked, coming into the kitchen. She was still in her bathrobe and her hair was going every which way, but
she looked better than she had the day before. Her features weren't as pinched.

“Just a friend,” Millie said. “Are you feeling better?”

Debra sighed and nodded. “I'm glad I called in sick though. I need some downtime.”

Maybe she needed some mother-daughter time. “Since you're home, would you like to do something fun today?”

Debra nodded thoughtfully. “Why not?”

By eleven thirty, Millie and her daughter sat with the early-lunch crowd, sampling the quiche at Sweet Somethings. “My, this place does a brisk business,” Millie observed.

“They should. No one bakes like Sarah Goodwin. Except you,” Debra added with a quick smile. She took a sip of her tea, closed her eyes, and sighed. “It feels good to take the day off.”

“You've been going awfully hard,” Millie said.

Debra set down her mug and looked around mournfully. “I hate my job.”

“Maybe you should look for a new one,” suggested Millie.

Debra looked at her like she'd suggested her daughter run away to Tahiti. “Mom, I can't just quit. I've got bills.”

“Well, I know, but . . .”

“It's not like it was for you. I can't just say, ‘Oh, I want to stay home and play in the garden.' ”

She didn't have a garden, so if you asked Millie, that was a moot point. And Millie wasn't sure she liked the implication that her life as a wife and mother had been one long garden party. Gardening was very satisfying, but it was still work.

“Life is all about choices, Debra,” she said firmly. “If you don't like your life, make it different.”

Debra blinked in surprise. Then her features soured. “I didn't choose to be divorced, Mom.”

“Yes, you did,” Millie said with a sigh. “You probably made a million little choices that brought you to this point. But that's water
under the bridge. If you want to go somewhere better, you're going to have to start picking some new paths.”

Millie realized she should have given her daughter this kind of a tough-love pep talk years ago. She and Duncan had treated their baby like a hot house flower. They hadn't done that with the boys and, even though Millie tried not to see it, the difference showed.

Whenever Debra got in trouble at school, Millie and Duncan took her part, something they'd never done with the boys. When she overspent her allowance in college, they bailed her out. And when her wedding had gone several thousand dollars over what they'd budgeted, they hadn't reined her in. Instead they'd emptied their savings. When Debra and her husband fought, Millie always took Debra's side. If she'd been able to be as impartial as she'd been when giving advice to Amber, would Debra still be married? Who knew? But it hadn't helped that she'd never built in her daughter the endurance for weathering hard times. What a painful thing to have to admit!

“Well,” Millie said as their waitress approached. “Let's make today the first day of the beginning of some new choices, shall we? Let's have fun and not dwell on the things in life that are unpleasant.”

Debra wasn't saying much of anything, so to get her started, Millie picked up the tab for lunch. Old habits died hard.

But Millie began to take hope that maybe her pep talk had done Debra some good. On Sunday, she announced she was going to check out line dancing at the Grange. “You don't need a partner to dance,” she told Millie. “They have a beginner class at five. You don't mind feeding the kids, do you?”

“They don't want to go with you?” Millie asked. She'd actually planned to go out with Altheus.

“They wouldn't be interested. Anyway, I need to get out on my own.”

“I'll make something,” Millie promised. She also promised herself
that next time she had plans with Altheus, she wouldn't cancel them.

So, when Debra called on Tuesday asking if Millie could run Eric to his five thirty dental appointment, Millie informed her she'd have to work late some other day.

“Come on, Mom, help me out here,” Debra begged.

“I'd love to, dear, but I have plans,” Millie said.

“With Altheus?” Debra made it sound like plans with Altheus couldn't compare with the importance of chauffeuring a grandson to a dental appointment. How far they had come from Debra not wanting her mother to even drive, let alone have a car.

“Yes,” Millie said, determinedly pleasant.

Debra gave a disgusted snort. “I thought you moved out here to help me.”

“I did,” Millie said, her voice less pleasant. She could feel her blood pressure rising, right along with her ire. “I also moved out here so we could enjoy spending more time together, something which we've done very little of. I didn't move out here to become your au pair. Things like dental appointments and Little League games are your department, Debra, and I wouldn't dream of depriving you of the satisfaction of being able to do those motherly duties. If you leave work now, you should get home just in time.”

Debra was still sputtering when she hung up, and that made Millie feel a little guilty. But not guilty enough to break her plans with Altheus. Debra wasn't the only one who needed to choose her way to a new life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

J
UNE HAD FOLLOWED
a soppy Memorial Day weekend. Other than meeting for coffee, Bobbi hadn't seen much of Jason. She could have. Her note had worked wonders and he was securely in her back pocket now. So securely that he'd invited her to go camping over the weekend. She'd invented a big wedding and claimed she couldn't possibly leave Hope to fill the order single-handed, so Jason had gone off alone to shiver in the cold and wet and pretend he was having fun. Except he hadn't gone alone. His brother went with him to eastern Washington, where the sun had shone and everything was beautiful.

There were still spiders, though, she was sure. And snakes. And bees. Much as she would like to have started meeting his family, she didn't regret her decision one bit. Anyway, she wanted them to see her at her best. It would be hard to be her best with no bathtub and no way to do her hair.

And now he was back, it was Friday, and they were going dancing. Everything was going according to plan.

Until someone new wandered into the flower shop: Mr. Not Perfect, all dressed up in jeans and a biker's black leather jacket. Bobbi stared at Duke and swallowed hard in a feeble attempt to water her dry mouth. Hope was in the back room working on an arrangement for a bridal shower, so here was Bobbi, all by herself, unprotected with Mr. Bad Boy.

“What are you doing here?” she blurted.

He frowned. “I came to order some flowers.”

“You've got a girlfriend,” she accused. She should have known.

“No, they're just for someone I wish was my girlfriend.”

Ouch. After all that chemistry when they were dancing at Slugfest, this felt about as good as a sticker in the butt. What did she care, though? She wasn't interested. She didn't want Duke. She wanted perfect, stable, sweet, boring Jason. Boring? Where had that come from? Jason wasn't boring. He was smart. And he liked to read and hike and camp and, oh, dear, she was listing all the wrong things. He was gorgeous and he was a good kisser and he was responsible. There. Perfect.

“What kind of flowers do you want?” Bobbi asked.

He sauntered over and leaned on the counter. He smelled like leather and man. “I'm not sure.”

“It's a little hard to help you if you don't know what you want.”

“Oh, I know what
I
want.”

The way he was looking at her was not good. Neither was the way she was feeling. Well, actually, it was very good. Every happy hormone in her body was now on red alert. But this wasn't supposed to be happening with Duke.

Bobbi bit her lip. “I'm dating Jason.”

“Lame.”

“Shouldn't you be working?”

“I had the morning off. Tooth cleaning.” He flashed her a smile,
showing off his newly cleaned pearly whites, and leaned in close. “You can still taste the cleaning stuff. Know what flavor they used?”

Bobbi stood staring at his lips like a deer caught in the headlights of a Mack truck. “No.”

“Chocolate.”

“Ummm.”

He leaned closer. “So, Jace tells me you guys know what flowers mean. Secret messages and stuff like that. What flower says you belong with me?”

“I don't know.” The words came out as a squeak.

“Well, find out and then send yourself some. And let my boy off the hook. You guys don't belong together.”

“Yes, we do,” she called as Duke left the shop, giving her a mouth-watering view of his hind end. “Yes, we do,” she whimpered.

 

JASON RETURNED FROM
a mess on the new house they were building on the lake to discover one of his workers at the downtown project was in the process of demoing the wrong wall. “Borg, what the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

His new hire, covered in drywall dust, let his maul drop and turned to stare at Jason. “Whaddya mean?”

“You're demoing the wrong damned wall, dickhead. That's a weight-bearing wall. You want to bring the whole side of the building down?”

“Damn,” growled Borg.

“Damn is right,” Jason growled back. “Get your head out of your ass, shore that up, and be glad I don't saw you in half.”

The whole day went downhill from there. Why did he ever go into construction, anyway? He should have listened to his mom and his old man and gotten a teaching degree. Except then he'd have had to try to educate guys like Borg who had no brains and less ambition. And, if he'd threatened to saw them in half, he'd
have gotten fired. No, much as this job made him nuts sometimes, this was where he belonged. Construction was the last frontier in the work field, the one place where a man could still be a man.