Free Front Yard by Norman Draper Page A

companies and wealthy homeowners who figured a PhD added to a title had a lot better ring to it than just a plain old bachelor’s degree in landscape design.
    Dr. Brockheimer was not so inclined. At the age of thirty-nine, she felt she was just hitting her stride as a researcher of national repute. She had been stuck in her associate professorship for five years, watching as other less-talented colleagues vaulted ahead of her. That included that no-brain Dr. Felicia Wellbeng, whose papers on sphagnum peat moss had made her the laughingstock of the discipline, worldwide. And Dr. Powell Pucker, who managed to churn out forty or so scholarly articles a year, all basically saying the same thing. Why couldn’t that old fart of a department head see that?
    It was Dr. Richlin who made sure the big research money got funneled to his tennis-playing cronies and their inane and spurious projects instead of her own more meaningful and potentially revolutionary initiatives.
    So, despite the widespread acknowledgment that she had done revolutionary research in the area of winter-hardy herbaceous perennials’ survivability in semi-permafrost conditions and growing southern magnolias on Virginia creeper–like vines in an upper Midwest climate, she was stuck on a middle rung of the ladder that lead to full professorship. That meant making a measly $67,000 a year.
    What irked her even more was that her estranged husband, the archaeologist Dr. Ferdinand Lick, had been named a full professor six years ago, despite the fact that he had never unearthed anything more significant than a few crumbling chipping tools.
    Dr. Lick’s particular ambition was to prove that European explorers had made their way up the Mississippi River to the current site of St. Anthony and environs as long ago as three hundred years prior to Columbus. They might have been Vikings, or Gascons, or wanderlusting Celtic and Anglo-Saxon monks populating the British Isles. Dr. Lick had spent much of the past dozen years researching the subject at the expense of smaller projects that at least would have borne some fruit.
    As a result of all this, and despite his rise through the ranks of his department, Ferdinand Lick had virtually no influence in his field, and hadn’t published a single book or scholarly article in years. That utter academic fecklessness had been a major contributor to the breakup of their marriage.
    And speaking of idiocy, here was Dr. Brockheimer having to put up with this mound of ersatz research from her Nean-derthalish undergraduates. What a waste of time! Things had gotten even worse this year when two sections of freshmen were foisted on her! Thank God classes, exams, and all the rest of this malarkey that passed for a college education were ending for the summer.
    Dr. Brockheimer took a deep breath, stared malevolently at her stack of unfinished work, and pushed a reluctant hand slowly toward the pile.

8
    Transformation
    G eorge and Nan leaned over a large sheet of vellum drafting paper spread out on the backyard patio table. Shirelle’s design, drawn to scale and displaying the accurate contours of the land, was punctuated with measurements, dimensions, and comments. It laid out for them a front yard the sheer majesty of which garden-by-the-gut naturals such as George and Nan could never have conceived. They silently studied the plan, their eyes open wide and darting across the paper, then narrowing into thin slits as they bowed their heads closer to the paper to try to make out Shirelle’s handwriting and draftsman-like renderings of shrubs, bushes, and flowers.
    â€œI can tell you what things are if you’re having a hard time reading my notations,” said Shirelle. She watched nervously as the Fremonts’ expressions veered dangerously toward the quizzical.
    What if they hated her plan? She would just die! But if they loved it? A hint of a smile creased Nan’s face. Shirelle’s heart leaped. Then,