There were no other customers so I asked in a low voice, “Can you tell me about pruning?”
The young man bent closer. “Pardon,” he said.
I looked around again and repeated my question.
“Sure,” he said in normal tones. “What stage are your plants at?”
“They’re about this tall.” I spread my hands about two feet apart. “But I don’t know how to prune and I haven’t done them properly. Just snipped away randomly.”
He took a piece of paper and a pen and drew a plant. “Those are leaves. You don’t cut those. The plant needs them. These are the shoots that are going to flower. Those are the ones you have to control. At first pruning you cut those down to four per plant. That way you end up with four big buds and not lots of little ones.”
“I’m too late for that,” I said.
“Yes, but you can still get some control. Choose about six to develop and then snip off all the others. Then the energy will go into the ones that you’ve left.” He leaned on the counter again. “If your plants are that tall you must be ready to put them into flower?”
“I guess so.” Marcus had gone off leaving no specific directions so I decided to go ahead and do it anyway. “What’s your name?” I asked wondering what the protocol about introductions was.
“Michael,” he said. “And that’s Pilot.” Michael indicated a short, older man with cropped gray hair and one earing who was unloading boxes. “Feel free to ask either of us questions any time.”
I wanted to pour out my worries about how I didn’t know what I was doing, but I just said, “I’ve got spider mites. I inherited them.”
“What are you doing about them?”
“Spraying with neem oil.”
“That’s all you can do right now, but after flowering, turn the fans off, leave the lights on for three days, then let off a Doctor Doom. That should be the end of them.” Michael produced a canister. I assumed it contained pesticide.
“I’ll get one later.” Then I thought I’d better get one while I had the money and Michael added it to my bag.
I was sure Marcus wouldn’t ask about the money or expect any change; anyway it was only a loan that I would pay back eventually, so why shouldn’t I spend it?
“How much food are you giving?” Michael asked.
“I give what they say on the label. Add it to the water.”
“What do you know about PPM?”
I stared at him. “Post-partum um, er, mood?”
Michael laughed. “Parts per million. An accurate way of figuring out how much food your plants need is to measure the PPM of the run off and estimate the PPM of the mix.”
“How do I do that?”
“With a PPM meter.” Michael stretched an arm over to where assorted gizmos hung and handed me a long glass rod, much like a thermometer. “You just stick this in the water and read it.”
“What should it say?”
Michael explained what different measures of PPM meant and how to adjust the food accordingly. “Here, I’ll print it out for you.” He turned to his computer and before long I heard the printer hum. He returned and handed me a sheet of paper with the PPM levels needed by, for example, Flowering stage: 1000-1400.
“How much is this?” I held up the meter.
“Thirty-five dollars.”
I looked at my change. It came to about twenty dollars. “This is the only money I have. I’ll get it next time.”
“You have enough there,” Michael said. He handed me a new meter in a box. “Come in any time if you have questions.”
I left as a pro. I now knew how to prune and I could hardly wait to get to my garden and begin. And I knew how to get rid of the damn spider mites. And not only that, I knew how to feed accurately.
I was grateful to Marcus and Swan, but why didn’t they know all I’d learned in an hour in the grow shop? Perhaps Marcus didn’t have a garden? Swan had said his plants always had spider mites so I had assumed he must have grown them. He had never said he did. He could have got the infested seedlings from someone else who always had spider mites. Swan didn’t grow—she lived in an apartment.
Pruning seemed such an important part of the whole business yet neither of them knew how to do it; at least, they had never shown me. Well from then on, I was going to be in charge. I was going to make the decisions. I was the Mistress of my garden.
The next morning I was up early and set to prune. The bedside table from the spare room became a pot holder so that the plant was at a height where I could see what I was doing. It seemed silly to cut off potential buds, but Michael had stressed the futility of growing tiny buds. I reckoned that a plant had only so much oomph and that should be used by the few rather than the many. Although he said not to remove leaves during the grow stage, he had also said to take off the bottom leaves of the plant before flowering.
After a while, I got the idea and snipped away with confidence. I must say the plants looked better for my efforts—as if they had had manicures. I gave each a careful spray of neem oil before putting them back under their lights. Another bag of clippings joined the other.
Using my new PPM meter as a guide, I added food to the water and watered the garden. It was time to switch to a twelve-hour light cycle. Noon to midnight was good for the lights to be off as it still gave me time in the morning to work. Swan had told me how important it was to not put any light on during the dark time as the plants revert back to a vegetative state very readily, so I could not work when the lights were off.
When I went back upstairs the strong smell of growing garden hit me. I sniffed around. It was me that stank—my shirt, hands, arms, and probably hair. A quick change and a wash and I could present myself at the door if need be, but I set aside a shirt and a long apron to wear downstairs and hung it inside the door to the basement.
As I chomped on a grilled cheese sandwich, I suddenly remembered I’d left the mothers in the grow room. They still needed only six hours of darkness or they too would flower and then couldn’t be used for cuttings. I rushed downstairs to move them into the cupboard and under the stack of fluorescent lights Marcus had set up.
The mothers, in their larger pots, were now bushy and bigger than the rest and not pruned because the flower sites would become cuttings to grow into seedlings for the next crop. I wasn’t sure when to take cuttings, or how, but now I had found an advisor, I would visit him for a lesson.
I had more or less given up on Swan; I’d seen neither hide nor hair of her for at least two weeks and there had been no response to my calls. Maybe she was away too? When she showed up that evening she looked dreadful—dank dark hair with no dye, smeared mascara, blotchy face. She had obviously been crying.
“Oh you poor wee thing,” I said. “Whatever is the matter?” I put my arms around her and she snuggled into me and cried into my shoulder.
When the first flood had abated I led her into the kitchen, sat her down, and put the kettle on. “I’ll make us some tea. Now, tell me all about it.”
“I lost my job. Business is down. And Milo is shacked up with some skank.” She looked at me sheepishly. “Sorry.” The floodgates opened again and I reached for a box of tissues.
I could barely make out what she was saying, but the gist of it was that the boyfriend she had been living with had been two-timing her while she was at work.
“I came home when I was fired and found them in our bed. Our bed. In my apartment. Bastard. Cheating asshole.” She thumped on the table calling Milo names I had never thought of using, but I understood the emotion well enough.
Before I met Frank I’d dated Trevor, a handsome local hero with a Triumph. To own a car in my young day, where I grew up, was quite something and I was thrilled when he asked me out for a spin in the Dales. I was too innocent to understand that I was to reward him for his favors in an unused barn.
I can see and smell that barn to this day. Stone walls with draughty apertures, packed soil and cow dung floor, wooden feeding trough along one wall. Trevor laid a blanket down and began my education into the adult world.
I fell in love. At least, I thought it was love. Everywhere I went I looked for him; no matter what I was doing he was in my thoughts; my dreams were of him in evening suit and me in a long, chiffon dress dancing down a wide sweeping marble staircase.
Then one day, as I walked down the High Street, a Triumph roared past, top down, Mabel Higginbottom in the passenger seat. Mabel Higginbottom with her Toni perm and her false eyelashes. She had the gall to wave to me. I wanted to throttle her—slowly—with a garrotte.
And as for Trevor… . Well, I knew exactly how poor little Swan was feeling. I just listened to her, made ‘there, there’ noises and filled her teacup. Eventually her sorrow changed to energizing anger. “When I get home I’m going to throw all his stuff out the window. After I’ve ripped the shit out of his tighty-whiteys. Bastard.”
“That’ll teach him,” I said.
Swan blew her nose. “How are you, Jess? How’s the garden? Must be time to switch.”
“Yes, I just did.”
“So that means,” she took the calendar off the wall, found the day’s date, counted eight weeks, “harvest time will be middle of September, say the eighteenth. I can come and trim. I’ll see if Marcus will be back, but if he isn’t I’ll find someone else.”
“What do I need to do?”
“There should be room near the door for everyone to sit. They need a good light. I’ll explain closer to the date.” Swan stood up as if ready to leave.
“I went to the grow shop a couple of days ago. Met Michael.”
“Yeah. He knows a lot.”
“He told me how to prune. I hadn’t been doing it properly.”
“I don’t know how to prune. I really only help with trimming and I water for people when they’re away, but I don’t know much about plants. You’ll have to show me.”
“Neither does Marcus.” I stood up to put the cups on the draining board.
“No, he grows outdoors mostly.”
Ahh, so that was it. Outdoor growing was a whole different ball game. If they didn’t prune the plants the same as indoor ones that would explain why Marcus didn’t know how and why he knew nothing about indoor pests like spider mites. Tree planting indeed.
I turned to Swan. “The next thing I have to find out about is how to take cuttings. I guess it’s time?”
“I’ve done that a couple of times. You need a bunch of jiffy pots and a couple of trays with domes. I’ll get them for you, if you want. And I’ll bring you a book.”
Swan left with promises to come back with the book and to help me take cuttings.
14
The plan for the next Crones’ meeting was to discuss books we were reading. Swan had got me Indoor Marijuana Horticulture, but it didn’t lend itself to discussion in that company. I arrived with a copy of How Green was my Valley instead.
There were twelve of us, each armed with a book and ready to sit in a circle. Ed dropped Eva off as usual and Maggie helped her in while Joan fussed over Nina.
Some Crones attended meetings regularly, whereas others were sporadic. The latter group included Thelma, an eighty-four-year old former ballet dancer. I smiled when she arrived. Thelma was always good for a laugh. She once had us all lie on the floor to see how far we could lift a leg and extend it over our heads. Most of us thought we were doing well to lift a leg at all, but Thelma could practically touch the floor behind her head. It was her smirk as she reviewed our prostrate, panting forms that made me chuckle.
We started every meeting with a check-in on how people are doing. Sometimes this activity took most of our time, as it did on that occasion.
Joan reported on Laura. “She’s at home being cared for by a niece, but she keeps going to the hospital wanting more tests.”
“Have they found out what’s wrong with her?”
“No. Something neurological they say, but they don’t know what.”
“Has anyone been to see her?”
“I went when she was in the hospital,” I said. “She wasn’t so good; couldn’t walk or even stand for long.”
“If she got herself off those damned drugs she’d be a lot better,” Maggie said. “Especially the statins. She’s showing typical side effects. But she won’t listen. Speaking of drugs…” Maggie got up to hand everyone a cup of coffee.
The church basement was quite bright in the summer as the sunlight streamed in a row of windows and gave the indoor-outdoor carpet the appearance of grass. I wanted to get out a deckchair. It was certainly warm enough as the church always cranked up the heat for our meeting, even in the summer.
“I’ll do some baking and take it to her,” Jane said when we were all settled with a cup.
“She won’t eat.”
“What? Not even when the doctor tells her to?” Jane rolled her eyes. “I’ll try anyway.”
When it was my turn to report I said, “I’ve followed up on a couple of jobs. One was quite promising—looking after an elderly gentleman while his daughter is at work, but they only wanted to pay five dollars an hour.”
“What?” Maggie said. “That’s disgusting. How are you expected to live on that?”
“There are always people who want something for nothing,” Jane said.
Claire chimed in with, “That’s patriarchy for you.”
She never mentioned she’d seen me at the food bank, bless her, so she could mention patriarchy as much as she wanted.
“They either don’t want to pay or they want someone younger,” I said.
One value of the Crones was to be honest with each other and keep what people said confidential. I really wanted to say, “I’m a bit worried about my plants; their leaves are yellow at the edges. Maybe I’m using the wrong food and they’re not getting enough nitrogen.” They would probably become dumb with shock if they knew what I was doing and anyway, one value of growers is never to talk about it.
Eva busied herself by opening and closing a black, plastic purse that had a stiff metal clasp. Her trembling fingers groped at the clasp until it finally opened with an irritating click. Then she foraged in the depths, producing a sound of rustling paper before closing the bag again with another click. We enjoyed a few seconds of silence from her while she hugged the bag to her chest as she looked around triumphantly. Then she started the whole performance again.
Someone asked her how she was. She looked around as though she didn’t know us, smiled her fatuous smile and said, “Give and thou shalt receive.”
Thelma spoke next. She must have been a stunner in her youth with her round, baby-blue eyes, her sensuous mouth, and her lithe body. Age had treated her well; few wrinkles and a general porcelain doll-like appearance that matched her little-girl voice with its slight lisp. As we hadn’t seen her for a while, we leaned forward to hear her news. To my surprise the baby-blues filled with tears and she couldn’t speak.
We waited until she finally blurted out, “George wants a divorce.”
“What?”
Eva broke the shocked silence with a click and a rustle. Maggie moved to stand behind Thelma so she could massage her shoulders. “Take your time,” Maggie said.
Thelma groped in her pocket for a tissue. “We’ve been married sixty years. We had our sixtieth in February. Now he wants a divorce. All because…all because…” She buried her face in her hands.
We waited expectantly. Maggie continued to massage.
Finally Thelma was able to say, “I had an affair. It only lasted three months; with the theater electrician. A beautiful example of the male form.” She stopped crying and smiled as if she could see him before her. “George was away on a course at the time. I broke it off when he came home.”
“How long ago was this?” I asked.
“Let me see. It was before I had the kids. I had been married three, no, four years, so it would be fifty-six years ago.”
“And he wants a divorce now?”
“How did he find out?” Jane asked.
“I kept Patrick’s love letters. I like to read them once in a while. When I feel low. He made me feel so, so…beautiful.” Tears flowed again.
“How did George find them?”
“That’s what I don’t understand. They were under my panties.”
“Why would George go poking around in your underwear?” I asked.
Maggie returned to her seat. “So you’ve been married sixty years and George discovers you had an affair fifty-six years ago and wants a divorce?” Maggie sounded as incredulous as the rest of us. “How old is he?”
“Ninety-four,” Thelma answered.
I wanted to crack up and struggled to control myself by holding my belly tight and clenching my teeth. Then I caught Jane’s eye and she smiled. I looked away, but started to shake. Then someone snorted and that did it. Everyone broke into uncontrollable laughter. Thelma looked hurt for a minute, and slowly smiled. Finally she was laughing like the rest of us. People rocked in their chairs, someone got up and rushed to the toilet, and we all enjoyed that mirth that leaves you aching and looking at your friends with affection.
Everyone reached for a tissue and Thelma wiped her eyes again, but this time for tears of laughter. “He said I had deceived him and he’s going to woo Chloe, a woman his age in our complex. So he’s bought himself a straw Panama hat for the summer.”
We all howled again. The thought of George, a feeble old man if ever there was one, in a straw Panama, bowing over the hand of an equally aged woman, made my day.
“I feel better for that,” Thelma said. “Silly old fool. Let him rot in hell.”
“Are you still living with him?”
Thelma and George lived in a retirement complex that provided housekeeping and a main meal.
Gone to Pot Page 10
