Free Hadrian's Lover by Patricia-Marie Budd

quickly passing. Numerous rainsqualls attacking Antinous in the past couple of weeks have aborted all of Dean’s early attempts to get his garden in order. According to Melissa Eagleton’s report on Salve! , there is very little chance of the rains letting up any time soon. The loss of this year’s garden is too much for Dean, and his sigh is both weary and discordant. The Hunter family garden is his pride and joy. Every year during the spring and summer months, he spends hours each day planting, weeding, trimming, pruning, and ensuring that the finest fruits, berries, and vegetables grow in the sprawling ledges of their backyard. It is a garden to please the eye as well as provide sustenance. The top three tiers are Dean’s flower and herb gardens, each with at least two fruit or berry trees: apples, pears, and Saskatoon berries and choke cherries. Cutting through the garden’s center is a path that helps Dean navigate up and down the various tiers. As one descends closer to the riverbed, Dean has one tier for sweet corn, another for a wide variety of vegetables including tomatoes, potatoes, beets, peas, carrots, cucumbers, onions, radishes, green and yellow beans, broccoli, lettuce, cabbage, and asparagus. The last tier is split with one side strictly for raspberries while the other half is divided between strawberries and blueberries. Dean is careful to keep the berries covered with cheesecloth so the birds cannot consume his crop. Interspersed throughout are the fallow tiers in which Dean alternates his vegetable and corn gardens. These tiers are kept well weeded so the soil can replenish and be used for compost storage. To keep these areas out of sight for visitors, Dean constructed temporary partitions to surround the unused areas. Geoffrey surprised Dean one year by commissioning an artist to paint images of the flowers and plants Dean most loves to cultivate on each of his partitions. This gift was given the firstyear after Dean’s garden won Hadrian’s Home Garden Award. Dean has garnered this award six times over the past ten years; the last three years consecutively.
    This year is different, though. Dean isn’t thinking about winning any awards, or trying to grow a new crop. Nor has he begun his annual ritual of digging his hands into the earth, spreading manure and compost, lovingly planting seedlings, carefully thinning and weeding. Instead, Dean has been holed up inside the house, watching the rain fall—too much rain. Not enough dry time has passed in between the rain for him to work the dirt, which, rather than being in soft beds, is now in thick muddy pools.
    Seated on the cushioned bench inside the bay windows, Dean stares morosely at the rain pounding down on his backyard. Gardening is his lifeboat, a ritual routine that keeps his mind from focusing on harsh memories—memories that recur every spring—always beginning on the Ides of March. “ Et tu, Brute? ” he mutters. Tears roll down his cheeks.
    This depression has been creeping up on Dean for over two months. Success at keeping it hidden and at bay was destroyed when the rains came. Prior to the steady downpour, Dean was keeping his mind focused on planning out the garden, getting seedlings ready, and cleaning out his garden shed. But the rainstorms came. And although it rains every spring, and Dean suffers low days as a result, this year the pounding down of the endless stream has swollen the river, flooding the first two tiers, drowning, and eventually washing away his precious berries. The other tiers have also been ruined as the heavy rains washed off all the topsoil he had worked so hard to build up and maintain over the years, reducing much of the garden to the stone and clay that lies beneath. To make matters worse, Geoffrey has been working late nearly every night for close to three months. With too much time on his hands, not seeing other outlets like sewing or house cleaning as options, Dean slowly has sunk deeper and deeper into