Grampy Fernside's Arc

Chapter 5 of 16

On the fourth morning, Grampy walked to the half-barrel and found his answer waiting. Tender green shoots stood up from the dark soil in a neat grid. Some had pushed through clean. Two stayed buried. He bent close and counted leaves. The middle depth and the wider spacing had won. He wrote the numbers in his diary and closed the cover. He had a planting plan. Now he needed a bed ready to take it. He walked around the shed to the hidden corner where his secret bed waited. He stopped. The bed had gone wild while he chased seeds and sprouts. A crust of dried mud capped the soil. Chickweed spilled over the log sides in pale green ropes. Yellow dandelions stood tall in the middle, roots already deep. Twigs and fallen leaves littered the surface. He pressed a thumb against the crust. It did not give. Four days. Four days to break it, clear it, and feed it before nineteen seeds went in. He went to the tool rack on the south wall. The pine-cone frame held his spade, his hoe, and his rake in their three notches. Forty years of use had worn the handles smooth and dark where his hands sat. He took down the hoe. Then he reached to the small hook below and lifted off the copper claw, three curved tines on a beaded handle. The claw was for weeds with stubborn roots. He would need it. "You're going to break your back on that." Delphine stood at the corner of the shed, barefoot, a beetle riding the point of her red hat. She looked at the weedy bed. "That's a mess." "It is," Grampy said. "I'll do the dandelions. You do the crust." He almost said no. Then he looked at the sun and the bed and the four days. "Claw goes deep," he said. "Get the whole root or it grows back stronger." He handed her the copper claw. She took it without ceremony and knelt at the far end. They worked through the morning. Grampy chopped the crust with the hoe in short strokes, then turned the clods and broke them with the rake. Delphine hooked the claw under each dandelion crown and pulled slow and steady until the white root came up whole. She piled the weeds on a flat stone. The chickweed came out in mats. By noon the bed was bare dark soil again, loose to the depth of his finger. He fetched the compost bucket and worked two scoops along the length. He raked it smooth. He stood back and looked at it. A clean bed. Four days early. Delphine wiped her hands on her overalls and handed back the claw. "Now what," she said. "Now we wait three days for the seeds," Grampy said. "Then we plant." He hung the claw back on its hook. The bed was ready. The seeds were not. But for the first time, both sides of the work matched.