Blush Rosewood's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The flood took Blush an hour to tame. She dug a spur channel with Bear's spade and sent the extra water into the low pasture, where the cows would drink it down by evening. By the time she washed the mud off her boots, the sun sat high and the herb beds were drinking steady. Blush stood at the edge of her garden and looked at what she had. Rows of yarrow in creamy bloom. A round cluster of marjoram, bright green and silver. St. John's Wort with butterflies working the yellow petals. Red clover thick along the fence. More than her small family could use. More than she could dry before it spoiled. She had thought about a stand for months. Teas for sleep. Salves for scrapes. Tinctures for the winter cough that ran through town every February. Today the thought sat down and would not leave. If she waited another season, half this harvest would rot in the shed. She walked to the barn and told Bear. He was oiling the hinge he had abandoned that morning. "I want to sell what I grow," she said. "Teas. Dried bundles. Small bottles. Out by the road, where people can stop." Bear set the can down. "You have the plants for it." "I need a stand," she said. "Something that keeps the sun off the bottles." He nodded toward the back of the barn. "There's the pink cabinet your aunt left. Shelves already built in. Roof over the top." Blush had forgotten the cabinet. She pulled the tarp off and found it dusty but sound. Pale pink boards. A shingled hood. Three shelves inside and two low cupboards below. She wiped it down with a wet rag while Bear hauled it out on the flatbed and set it near the front gate, where the road bent close. She worked through the afternoon. She cut yarrow and hung it in bundles from the top shelf. She stripped marjoram leaves into a bowl and filled small jars. She poured dried clover into paper sachets and labeled each one in pencil. She set a white planter of mixed cuttings on the ground beside the stand so people could see the plants alive before they bought them dried. She wrote prices on a slate. Tea, three dollars. Salve, five. Bundles, two. A woman in a dusty sedan slowed at the gate before Blush had finished stocking. She rolled down her window and asked if the yarrow was for sale. Blush handed her a bundle and took four dollars. The woman drove off with the stems on her passenger seat. Blush stood at the stand with the bills folded in her palm and counted them twice. By sundown she had sold nine bundles, three jars of marjoram, and every sachet of clover. The shelves were nearly bare. She would need to harvest again tomorrow, and the day after, and she would need more jars than she owned.