Page 26

“I came out thinking I would simply deadhead a few flowers, but then I started to see plants that needed dividing and weeds that needed weeding and suddenly I was lost,” said Mrs. Barnes cheerfully.

“Have you always gardened?” Adele asked.

“It was a hobby I acquired when I first married my husband, Raymond. He was a keen horticulturalist, and he soon had me digging side by side with him in the garden. Have you ever tried?”

She shook her head. “My aunt has a beautiful garden in London, but I spent more time watching my cousin pick flowers to dry than I did tending to them. I do enjoy arranging flowers, but that is the extent of my skill.”

Mrs. Barnes picked up a pair of iron secateurs. “Why don’t you give it a try?”

Adele eyed the shears with uncertainty. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

“I’ll show you,” said Mrs. Barnes, turning to face a rosebush with huge blowsy pink blooms. “This is a rose called Jacques Cartier. It is coming to the end of its season, but there is still a little life left in it before it’s pruned in January.

“Take the spent bloom”—Mrs. Barnes demonstrated—“and look for a healthy leaflet of five leaves. Then you make a cut just above it.” The secateurs went snip, and Mrs. Barnes dropped the bloom into her basket. “And that is that.”

Adele looked skeptically at the rosebush and, not wanting to offend her hostess, set her parasol down on the grass, and peeled off her white gloves. She took the secateurs and approached the rose before hesitating.

“That would be a good one to remove,” said Mrs. Barnes, pointing to a bloom that had dropped half of its petals.

Adele gently took the bloom and looked down the stem for a leaflet. She opened the secateurs.

“Now snip it with confidence. If you do not, you risk crushing the stem,” said Mrs. Barnes.

Adele did as she was told, decisively cutting the stem so that the rest of the rose’s petals fell to the ground and all she was left with was a naked flower head in her hand.

“Well, Miss Pearce, I think we’ll make a gardener out of you yet,” said Mrs. Barnes, taking the secateurs. “Would you care for a stroll around the garden before we have our tea?”

“I would,” she said, surprised to find it was the truth.

“Excellent,” said Mrs. Barnes, stooping to pick up her basket and the bag of gardening tools.

Adele put her lace parasol up and fell into step beside the other woman.

“This is what I call the long border,” said Mrs. Barnes, gesturing to the symmetrical stretch of planting on either side of a strip of grass that ended in a distant arbor. “It isn’t a very imaginative name, I’m afraid, but it suits.”

“Did you create the garden yourself?” Adele asked.

“I did. This was all laid to grass before giving way to our native chaparral when I had the house built.”

“Goodness. That must have been quite an undertaking,” she said as drooping red grass with gold tips brushed her skirts.

Mrs. Barnes laughed. “I had some experience from helping Raymond, but if I had known what a project it would become, I don’t know that I would have been brave enough to start.”

Ahead of them, a middle-aged man dressed in brown corduroy trousers, a cloth coat, and a battered straw hat stepped into the path from around a bend.

“Ah, Mr. George,” called Mrs. Barnes. “Would you please store these for me?”

The gardener hurried up. As he took the tool bag and basket from Mrs. Barnes, he said, “I was just going to prune the magnolia.”

“Goodness, it’s that time of year already, isn’t it? Will you please check the California pepper tree as well? I am probably fretting unduly, but I worry about the damage it sustained during our last Santa Anas,” said Mrs. Barnes.

Mr. George nodded and retreated down the garden path with the tools under his arm, whistling as he went.

“What are the Santa Anas?” asked Adele.

“A wicked wind that blows from the desert to the ocean and dries everything out. Some say that it makes people go mad,” said Mrs. Barnes with a wicked grin. “Mostly I find it a great nuisance, and at times a danger.”

“A danger?”