CHAPTER 1
JUNIA
The fern bites me.
Actually bites me. Tiny green teeth sink into my thumb as I wrestle the terra cotta pot off the back of the rental truck, and I yelp so loud a bird evacuates the maple tree across the street.
"Listen here, you photosynthesizing little gremlin." I hold the pot at arm's length. The Boston fern, Reginald, unfurls a frond and snaps at my wrist. "We discussed this. New house. New rules. No biting the hand that waters you."
Reginald hisses. An actual, genuine hiss, like a cat that learned chlorophyll.
I set him down on the cracked front walkway next to the eleven other pots I've already unloaded, each one more belligerent than the last. The lavender is stress-blooming so aggressively the entire yard smells like a French countryside having a panic attack. My prized moonvine has wrapped itself around the truck's side mirror and refuses to let go. And the succulents, my sweet, supposedly low-maintenance succulents, have formed what I can only describe as a defensive phalanx in the corner of the truck bed.
"You're plants," I mutter, climbing back into the truck. Sweat plasters my curls to my forehead. Potting soil streaks my yellow overalls from hip to ankle. "You don't get opinions about real estate."
The succulents disagree. The largest one, Barbara, extends a thick jade leaf and smacks my hand when I reach for her.
"Barb. Seriously."
Another smack.
I grab her pot anyway, tucking it against me like a football, and hop down from the truck bed. My sneakers hit the overgrown grass and immediately disappear. The lawn swallows my ankles. Crabgrass and dandelions and some aggressive clover reach mid-shin, and I have to wade through it like a swamp to reach the growing colony of plants on the walkway.
The yard is a disaster. A beautiful, wild, glorious disaster. The previous owners clearly gave up on maintenance sometime around 2019, and nature threw a party. Creeping jenny cascades over the front porch steps. A rose bush has consumed the mailbox whole. The actual mailbox is in there somewhere, presumably accepting letters into its leafy tomb.
I love it.
I love every unruly inch of it.
The house itself is small. Two bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen with avocado-green tile that screams 1974. The paint peels in spots. The gutters sag. The front porch lists slightly to the left, which gives the whole structure a tipsy, cheerful lean.
It's mine. Every crooked, overgrown square foot.
I drop Barbara next to Reginald, who immediately tries to bite her. She swats him with a leaf. I leave them to their turf war and wade back to the truck for the lawn furniture.
The wrought iron bistro set weighs approximately one thousand pounds. Each chair fights me independently. I drag the first one through the grass, the legs catching on everyroot and rock hidden beneath the green tangle, metal shrieking against a buried flagstone I didn't know existed.
By the time I get it to the porch, my arms shake and my lower back lodges a formal complaint.
Chair two goes worse. The leg hooks a loop of wild grape vine, and the whole thing lurches sideways, pulling me with it. I stumble, catch myself on a fencepost that wobbles under my weight, and somehow end up on my knees in a patch of clover with the chair on top of me.
"Great. Love this for me."
I shove the chair off and lie there for a second. The sky stretches pale blue overhead, streaked with the kind of wispy clouds that look like someone dragged a fork through whipped cream. A ladybug lands on my collarbone.
The truck still has the table. The big ceramic planters. Three more boxes of seedlings. The bag of enchanted fertilizer that keeps trying to grow things through the cardboard. A trellis. Another trellis. A third trellis, because I have a problem.
And the sunflowers.
God, the sunflowers.
I sit up. From across the yard, visible through the open truck door, the sunflowers track my movement. So many stems, each one four feet tall and growing, their huge golden heads swiveling in unison like furry satellite dishes. They've already punched through their box. One enterprising stalk has threaded itself through the truck's ceiling handle.
"Don't look at me like that. We're going in the backyard."
They sway. Mournfully.
"The backyard is great! It has sun! It has bees, probably! You'll love it!"
