Free Backyard by Norman Draper Page A

logs. Then you can start working. My gosh, I do believe tomorrow, mid-afternoon, could be one of your windows of opportunity. Say, two thirty to five p.m.”
    An hour later, Marta walked forlornly to her car carrying a digital camera and a large shopping bag that contained the cowl, the sunglasses, additional batteries for the camera, and a thick log book. Dr. Sproot, a big smile creasing her worn and emaciated face, waved at her. This created a new sensation in Marta, a sort of carbonated bubbling up of excitement and joy. When was the last time she had seen poor Dr. Sproot smile? And waving at her, too? The feelings of friendship began to rekindle in Marta as she got in the car and turned on the ignition. The purring engine reassured her and strengthened her resolve. She would do what needed to be done for her friend, and to further the institution of gardening in Livia. It was right and just.
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    Now, here she was in Fremontland, having terrifying second thoughts about her mission, but compelled by some force to keep going. Fraidy cat? She was no fraidy cat.
    Beneath her and to the left were some shoots coming up that Marta hadn’t noticed before. She bent over, adjusted the lens of her digital camera for the close-up, and snapped away. Then, she moved back to get the broader perspective and took some more pictures. After checking the little flip-open display window on the back of the camera to make sure she had gotten the best lighting and distance to capture enough detail, she snapped it shut, and slung the camera strap back over her shoulder while she proceeded to scribble down notes and a crude map in her small spiral-bound notepad. She didn’t know exactly what it was poking up through the ground here, but Dr. Sproot would want to know, and would probably be able to identify it as soon as she saw the pictures.
    What an expert Dr. Sproot was! Over the years, she had been such a sisterly helper to her in her early gardening efforts, and had selflessly shared her encyclopedic knowledge of all things botanical without charging so much as a cent.
    Things had changed, of course. Dr. Sproot, always the domineering sort, had gotten more so. And so strange! Marta traced it back to when her husband, Mort, died. Mort was struck down in the prime of life six years ago by a stroke that killed him right before their very eyes, as Dr. Sproot was guiding her on a tour of some of her new creations. It was his death that had freed Dr. Sproot to be the true Nazi the good Lord intended her to be.
    Mort was a lush and a lout. In that, he was an insurmountable obstacle to Dr. Sproot’s ambition of worldwide horticultural domination, and he did manage to contribute to the community’s well-being by tamping down Dr. Sproot’s baser nature. He was the only person Marta was aware of who could actually intimidate her.
    Mort was a big, blustery Bluto of a man. He belched a lot and wore shirts perpetually stained with WD-40, ketchup, and something else that kept dribbling down from his mouth and dripping off his chin, and which no one but Mort could identify, but he wasn’t telling. There was the scent of flatulence and grain alcohol that always seemed to follow Mort wherever he went. It easily overpowered the muted but pleasant fragrances that suffused Dr. Sproot’s gardens.
    Mort had no interest in the floral world whatsoever. He would regularly ravage Dr. Sproot’s gardens by running over the edges with his lawn mower, because he couldn’t tell a weed from a weigela shrub. This had created some tension in the childless Sproot family. Still, Dr. Sproot put up with Mort’s behavior with a meekness that never ceased to amaze those who were well acquainted with the rude, bossy side to her personality. When Dr. Sproot got her degree, Mort scoffed. When she placed third in the first of two annual Big Turkey River Regional Desert Plant Contest competitions, he sneered, even though the third-place prize was