Page 58 of The Botanist's Assistant
She, however, did not.
Having a visitor launched all kinds of questions. Should she wear one of her work outfits or her gardening clothes? Certainly, her house clothes were not appropriate. Should she prepare snacks? Must she invite him to dinner if he stays late and, if so, could she stretch her planned dinner of pork chop and green beans or would she have to buy twice as much as needed and eat the same meal two or three days in a row? Should she offer beer or wine, which she doesn’t have? Would he accept water with ice and a sprig of mint?
Plus, she’s had enough surprises in the last weeks to last her a lifetime. She doesn’t need one more.
At five thirty-three, she hears a vehicle engine coming up the driveway. She goes out into the yard and waits, tugging at the hem of her hummingbird blouse, which she decided to pair with her sneakers and her gardening jeans, which she mended and washed right after Joe’s call. Only now she thinks she should have chosen either a work outfit or gardening clothes and not tried to meld the two. It’s too late, however. An older-model black Chevy pickup rumbles up the last stretch of driveway and turns into the yard.
“Hello,” Margaret says as Joe gets out of the vehicle.
She feels like a stranger on her own property.
“Hey, Margaret.” Joe lifts a hand. “This is quite a place you have.”
“Thanks. It belonged to my great-aunt Hazel on my father’s side. She was a librarian and also a gardener, as you can see. The cottage was built in 1898 by an early settler, a well digger, I’m told. He came here from Ireland after his wife died young and lived by himself for thirty years.”
She sounds like a tour guide. She lets the story trail off.
“Well, it’s perfect and your garden looks amazing. Come see what I brought.”
Margaret goes over and peers into the truck bed. There is a pile of assorted metal rods, lengths of shelving and a large fold of some kind of clear plastic fabric.
“A portable greenhouse,” Joe says of the jumble of parts. “My housemate is doing a remodel at some fancy country club development, and this was in the backyard. They were going to throw it away. It’s perfectly good, though. I thought of your tomatoes and asked if I could have it. If you don’t want it, I’ll take it to the dump, where it was going to go anyway.”
Margaret is speechless. Usually, she starts seedlings in her laundry room, which means that, at certain times of the year, it is almost impossible to get to the washing machine and she has to wash all her clothes by hand.
“Well, this is a surprise,” she says.
“A good one, I hope.”
“Oh yes, of course. It’s amazing, incredible.”
“You’ll have to level out a pad for it. It’s six-by-ten.Apparently, you can put it up in half a day. I can help when you’re ready.”
It’s the best gift Margaret has ever received—after, of course, Dr. Deaver’s birthday card, which she keeps in a drawer in her bedside table.
“But why?” she asks.
Joe must know she’s not talking about why a flattened space is needed for the greenhouse. “Because you’re smart and brave and different.”
Here it comes, Margaret thinks.Another person to call her odd.
“There aren’t a lot of people I’ve met who are so passionate about their work that they’re willing to handle venomous leaves or who speak their mind when it counts and refuse to give up when everyone is telling them to stop.
“People like you are my favorite kind,” he continues. “And, I’ll tell you what, I like them more than any politician or actor or billionaire I’ve spent time with.” He rests an elbow on the tailgate. His eyes are honey-colored in the sunlight. “I guess a greenhouse might be considered over-gifting, but I like to help my friends, and I consider you a friend.”
Some women might be disappointed in a man saying that he was their friend, but not Margaret. Most of her life has been spent wishing for something like this: a companion, a confidant, someone to help her assemble a greenhouse and not compare her to a horse.
“Well, I’m glad to be your friend,” Margaret says, “and even though, yes, a whole greenhouse might be a bit of over-gifting, as you call it, it’s still wonderful.”
“Just don’t tell anyone. I can’t be handing out greenhousesto everyone I like.” He winks and Margaret feels a smile on her face.
“Shall we get to it?” he says.
It takes them twenty-five minutes to find a suitable spot and unload the greenhouse parts. After, Margaret gives him a tour of her garden—which Joe admires with enthusiasm even as he professes to have a black thumb.
“Would you like a beer?”
Margaret had decided she needed to offer more than a glass of ice water and had asked a young clerk at the liquor store what was a good brand of beer to buy. She paid for two bottles after explaining that she would have no use for a six-pack and that corporate America used packaging as a way to sell a person more of a product than they could use and thus encouraged waste. By the time she told him about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which was a huge gyre of both microscopic and solid plastic, and that some of the items like baby bottles and toothbrushes had been floating in the ocean for fifty years, the clerk was practically pleading to sell her just two bottles.
