A Time to Bloom (Leah's Garden #2)(2)
“And why was that?”
“’Cause there was no gate, so I smashed the fence to make a gate.” She pulled her shoulders up to her ears. “And now my cow can go in his pasture.”
“Makes perfect sense to me,” Del muttered. Lilac nearly burst trying not to laugh.
Forsythia sent a pleading look to the others, then shook her head. “Big help you are.”
Del pushed back her bench seat and took the tin they used for cookies down off a shelf. She handed two to Sofie. “You take these and give one to Robbie. That’ll make him stop growling.”
As the little girl happily trotted outside, the four sisters looked at one another and let the laughter roll.
“You’ve got to admit, she thought it through before smashing the fence. That’ll teach him to build gates.” Lark reached for a cookie and passed on the tin.
“As Ma would have said, there’s a life lesson here: Always build gates. First is probably best.” Del nodded. “Our mother was a very wise woman.” She hoped to pass along some of that wisdom to her students, since she doubted she’d ever have a family of her own.
“She would have so enjoyed these little ones. Sometimes I miss her so much I hurt all over.” Lilac looked down at the year-old boy starting to wiggle in her arms. “We need to remember to tell Jesse about the fence smashing.”
Adam and Jesse were spending every spare minute trying to complete the four upstairs bedrooms in Adam’s house. He was already muttering that they should have made the house larger. Forsythia suggested the answer was to move his office and treatment rooms to a separate building or off one side of the house. Ideally, they could add a room or two for patients who needed more extensive care.
“Any more planning we need to do for the party?” Forsythia asked.
“Not that I can think of, except what food we want to fix,” Del said. “Folks will bring the rest. What else needs to be done here, besides creating a place to dance?”
“Pray for rain. Carrying buckets to water the garden is a real backbreaker. I should ask Jesse if he could fashion me a yoke to carry two buckets, like I’ve seen in pictures.” Lark looked to Lilac. “Could you draw a diagram?”
Lilac thought a bit. “I’ve seen pictures like that. It might be faster than hauling buckets in the wagon. What about the barrel that was on the wagon we came west in?”
“Too big for the wagon we have now. We’ll use that to collect rainwater as soon as we have a shingled roof on some building.” Lark thought a moment. “Remember using water from the rain barrel to wash our hair?”
“Or dancing in the rain to do the same.”
“Next rain here, we can do that again. It should be warm enough by now. I need to hitch the oxen and plow another section for seeding more grain. If it stays dry, we can start scything the hayfield. Then move the grazers over. An article I read in the farming magazine talked about alternating pastures. It means more fencing, but everything not planted can be hayed.” Lark rubbed her forehead. “Isn’t that the way of farming? We need rain for the growing things, and yet to get the hay down and stacked, we need sun.”
“While you’re plowing, I need to start hoeing so the weeds don’t get ahead of us. I think we have enough leaf lettuce for supper tonight. And the peas will be ready to pick any day now.” Del pushed back from the table. “It must be close to dinnertime too.”
“I’m hungry, Ma,” Robbie announced from the doorway.
“We’ll have bread and jam in just a bit.” Del pulled the long knife from its slot in a wooden knife holder, something else Jesse had carved for them. He spent many of the long winter evenings carving utensils and building furniture. Adam helped whenever he could.
There was so much to do, getting a new farm up and running, a new home, a new life. School planning on top of it all. And now she’d added preparing for a party to the list.
That Sunday at church, Rev. Pritchard announced the invitation for the gathering the following Saturday. “To think the Nielsen sisters have been here for a full year. They promised the evening would include singing and dancing, so bring whatever you would like for the potluck supper and musical instruments besides. Extra chairs or benches if you can.” He nodded to Henry Caldwell, the attorney. “You have an announcement?”
Caldwell stood. “We have scheduled a town meeting for a week from Monday. There are many exciting things on the horizon, and we want to make everyone aware of the possibilities. I know we’ve been talking about when the train will be running on those tracks out there. It turns out the railroad company has designated Salton to be a water stop. They will start constructing the water tanks and towers soon, but drilling the well comes first. We hired a dowser, and he’s certain there is plenty of water. It just depends on how deep they will have to drill.”
“Any more announcements?” the young pastor asked, then nodded. “We will continue with our closing hymn, ‘Blest Be the Tie That Binds.’”
He nodded to Mrs. Caldwell, the attorney’s wife, who sat at the piano. Forsythia lifted her violin, and Lark was ready on the guitar. They joined in at the opening bars.
Del tapped her foot as they all sang, “‘. . . binds our hearts in Christian love.’” It was a blessing to have moved close enough to a town that already had a church and a school, and now a doctor. With the railroad investing in the town, all manner of changes would come. Lord, show us your way. She scanned the congregation, counting the heads of school-age boys and girls. She’d found a joy in teaching that she’d never imagined, a chance to make a difference in the lives of not just children but also their families. Yet the new building the town had promised was not yet begun. Worry pinched her middle. She needed to speak to someone about that. Again.