by Donna Ball
Ida Mae, however, spent almost a week sanitizing the sunroom and fussing over the mess they had made.
Cici contracted with Deke Sanders, of Sanders Grading, Hauling, and Septic Repair, for a half day’s dozer work. Since he had worked most of the previous summer on their septic system and was a fellow member of the Methodist church, he was willing to wait for his payment. He pulled down the remains of the barn in a matter of a few hours, leaving the stone foundation ready for rebuilding.
Noah passed his tenth-grade placement test with a score that impressed even Lindsay. As a reward, and because he seemed so determined to do it, they all agreed to allow Noah to start his part-time job with Jonesie on Saturdays only. Lori, surprisingly enough, agreed to drive him back and forth. He talked a lot about Melanie, Jonesie’s fourteen-year-old daughter, who sometimes ran the cash register on Saturdays, and whenever he did, worry lines appeared between Lindsay’s brows. With his first paycheck he bought nails and hinges for the new barn.
Lori spent every spare moment either at the library or working on her computer with complicated graphics and spreadsheet programs. To Bridget’s delight she began to accumulate quite a collection of actual books, but whenever anyone tried to look at them she quickly hid the titles. Her research was not Lori’s only secret. Although it was obvious she was making considerable progress with the pool and fountain project, for the last couple of weeks she had erected an elaborate screen of beanpole stakes and old blankets around the work site, and she and Noah conducted the final stages of construction in absolute seclusion.
On the second Sunday in May the ladies came down for breakfast and were greeted by garden roses in a cut glass vase on the table, orange juice and sugared strawberries at each place setting, and, through the open kitchen windows, the breeze of a balmy May morning and the musical sound of splashing water.
“Happy Mother’s Day!” Lori exclaimed. In her hands she held a beautifully glazed pecan coffee cake on a footed cake platter, and she had surrounded it with rose petals.
“Don’t worry,” Noah assured them as they exclaimed over the cake and the table, “she didn’t make it. She bought it yesterday at the bakery in town.”
Lori gave him a dark look as she set the cake on the table, which he ignored. “Come on,” he insisted. “Let’s show them.”
“They have to have breakfast first,” Lori argued. “Everyone knows you have breakfast first, then presents.”
Ida Mae came in, tying her apron. “What’s all this fuss? You kids have been banging around in here for an hour.”
“Happy Mother’s Day, Ida Mae!” Lori said happily. “You just sit down and relax. We’re making breakfast this morning.”
“Not in my kitchen, you’re not!” she returned in real alarm.
“Presents,” said Cici quickly, hoping to distract Lori. “Did you say something about presents?”
“Come on,” Noah said, barely able to disguise his excitement as he held open the back door. “It’s this way.”
“Oh, okay!” Lori pushed ahead of him to lead the way. “Maybe just this once, presents before breakfast.”
The ladies walked in their slippers and robes across the dewy grass, and they could see the spray of the fountain as soon as they rounded the corner onto the flagstone path.
“Oh, Lori!” exclaimed Lindsay. “You did it! You got the fountain running again.”
“Not exactly by herself,” Noah interjected.
“So that’s what you two have been working on so hard these last few days!” Bridget said, pretending surprise.
“But that’s not the best part,” Lori insisted. She grasped her mother’s hand and pulled her along. “Wait until you see.”
The rose garden, just coming into full bloom with its showy pink and yellow and scarlet velvet blossoms, formed a partial screen as the path wound around and opened, at last, onto the pool and fountain area. All three women stopped, and caught their breath, pressing their hands together in a moment of sheer delight.
“Oh my goodness,” said Lindsay softly. “I can’t believe you did this.”
“Lori . . . Noah . . .” Bridget shook her head in wonder. “It’s just like I imagined.”
Cici stared at Lori. “You did this? With your own hands?”
“I helped,” Noah reminded her, a trifle belligerently.
“Not that much,” Lori shot back, then relented. “Okay, he helped.” And finally she modified it to, “We did it together.”
This prompted Noah to admit, “She did a pretty good job, for a girl.”
The pool was ten feet in radius and highlighted in the center by a fountain that sprayed a delicate bell of water three feet into the air. Deep purple water lilies drifted across the surface, which was punctuated by delicate sprays of green and lavender water grasses. The circumference was trimmed with a perfectly even and highly polished surround of river stone, and around it a six-foot flagstone sitting area had been cleared. At one end was the statue of a little girl with a flower basket that Lindsay and Cici had moved to the rose garden last year, now returned to its rightful place. At another was a hand-crafted wooden bench, stained and sealed against the weather. And all around the sitting area were carefully mulched plantings of colorful primrose, variegated coleus, pink begonias, and even a small weeping willow tree. It was a secret garden in the midst of a rose garden.
“Well, will you look at that.” Ida Mae, curious, had come up behind them. “It’s just like it was in the old days.”
“Almost,” Noah corrected. “The willow tree, she needs to grow some. And we don’t know what happened to that bench that was under it, so we had to build a new one.”
Cici stared. “You built that?”
“It wasn’t easy neither, since you wouldn’t let me use your power tools,” Noah pointed out, a little accusingly.
“So I did the cutting,” said Lori cheerfully, “with a jigsaw I borrowed from Farley. We had to do it while you weren’t around,” she added.
Cici’s hand went to her heart. “You—used a jigsaw?”
“Look.” Noah grinned as he gestured to the bench. “We fancied it up some for you.”
The ladies walked over to the bench. Cici still looked stunned as she tried to get the picture of her daughter with a power saw out of her head. Lindsay reached the bench first and burst into delighted laughter. In a moment the others followed suit.
On the seat of the bench Noah had painted three large red and black ladybugs.
Noah and Lori wanted to show them the reflecting pool, which had also been cleaned and restored—although, Lori assured them, without nearly as much trouble—and which was actually reflecting a swatch of blue sky and the corner of a puffy cloud. The secret, according to Noah, which he had learned from some of the guys at the hardware store, was painting the bottom with pitch.
But by far the best idea of the morning was when Bridget suggested that they all enjoy a breakfast of fruit and coffee cake out in the fresh air around their beautifully restored fountain—which of course, made it impossible for Lori to cook the breakfast feast she had planned. Afterward, they all went to church services, and Noah wore a tie.
Two dozen long-stemmed roses arrived from Bridget’s children, along with handmade construction paper greeting cards from the grandchildren, and after lunch her son and daughter placed a conference call and they talked for half an hour. Ida Mae made a strawberry shortcake using angel food cake layered with fresh strawberries so sweet and juicy they soaked all the way through. They ate it sitting on the front porch in the lacework shade of the poplar tree, watching the hummingbirds dart back and forth.
“This,” declared Cici, setting her plate aside, “has been an absolutely perfect Mother’s Day.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” sighed Bridget contentedly.
“Me, either,” agreed Lindsay. “In fact, I think I’ll spend the rest of it sitting by our gorgeous new fountain, reading that novel I’ve been promising myself I’d get to all spring. That’s som
ething I’ve wanted to do ever since we bought this place. You two couldn’t have given us a better present.”
Noah, who was sitting on the steps, scraped his plate clean. “Maybe I’ll just get me another piece of cake.”
“You could offer to bring someone else one,” Lori pointed out, and he gave her a scornful look as he passed.
“You know where the kitchen is.”
Lori glared after him for a moment. “Just when I think there’s hope for him . . .”
Then she shrugged it off and turned to them. Her eyes held the carefully guarded excitement of a secret that had been kept too long. “Everybody,” she said, getting to her feet, “wait right here. There’s one more present. I wanted to wait until you had time to relax and appreciate it.”
“Oh, Lori, really, you’ve done too much already . . .” Bridget started to protest.
But Cici smiled broadly, leaning back in her rocker and stretching out her legs, “I’m totally relaxed.”
“If it’s more cake,” Lindsay said, “bring it on.”
“Wait right there,” Lori called over her shoulder as she hurried inside.
When she was gone, Lindsay said fondly, “I think the two of them are enjoying this more than we are. They’re great kids, both of them.”
Cici smiled. “Did you ever think, when we moved in here last year, that it would all turn out like this?”
“Did you ever think,” countered Bridget, “under any circumstances at all, that we would be spending our retirement years raising a teenage boy?”
“What, are you kidding? I’m still trying to get my mind around the chickens.”
“We should get a cow,” Bridget mused. “If we’re going to live on a farm, we should have a cow.”
Cici returned a steady look. “Do you know what I like best about this house?”
“That it doesn’t have a cow?”
“Right.”
Lindsay’s smile was wistful. “I sent Mandy some photographs of Noah. For Mother’s Day, you know.”
Bridget looked at her solemnly. “It was her decision, Lindsay.”
“I hope so,” Lindsay said. “I hope it was the right one.”
“Are you disappointed about the adoption?”
The women spoke softly, so as not to be overheard, and occasionally they cast cautious glances over their shoulders toward the house. Lindsay shook her head. “All I wanted was to protect him, and give him a fair start in life. The directed guardianship does that just as well.”
“This is a huge responsibility,” Bridget said, unnecessarily.
“Tell me about it,” Lindsay sighed. And then she added, frowning a little, “I think that Melanie Jones is a little fast. We’ll have to keep an eye on her.”
They all laughed.
Lori came clattering down the stairs and through the screen door. She had three dark blue presentation folders in her hand, and she stood before them, clearing her throat purposefully, until she had their full attention.
“This,” she informed them importantly, and passed a folder to each of them, “is for you.”
Exclamations of “Oh my goodness!” and “Look at that!” and “What is it?” greeted the receipt of each folder. On the cover was a full color drawing of what appeared to be a heraldic crest, consisting of a shield that was red on the left and black on the right, overset by a winged horse with its hooves raised as though for combat. Across the top was a banner that read, “Ladybug Farm.” And, below the crest, in bold flowing script: “Winery and Gourmet Foods.” And below that, in a slightly smaller font: “Special Events and Catering upon Request.”
“Wait a minute,” Lindsay said, studying the drawing. “This is like that sketch I found in the woodbin.” She looked up at Lori in amazement. “That’s exactly what it is! How in the world—”
Lori’s smile was pleased. “It’s also the original label for the Blackwell Farms Shiraz during the sixties,” she announced. “I found it in that book you asked me to take back to the library, Aunt Bridget, and Noah drew a copy for me. Only”—she pointed to the banner on Lindsay’s folder—“it originally said ‘Blackwell Farms,’ of course.”
“How clever! So that’s what you’ve been spending all your time at the library on! What is this?” Cici fanned through the pages of the folder. “A history of the farm?”
“Actually,” replied Lori, leaning back against the porch rail and folding her arms, “it’s your business plan.”
The pleasure on their faces faded slowly into uncertainty as their eyes dropped again to their folders.
“Winery?” said Cici.
“Gourmet foods and special events?” The doubt in Lindsay’s voice was clear.
“Catering.” Bridget’s tone was thoughtful. “Now there’s something I never considered.”
“Look,” Lori said, when she had their attention again, “you’re not the first ones to try to figure out how to make this place pay for itself, you know. I’ve been reading everything I could find on Blackwell Farms, and what I found out is that they were famous for using everything they had, and for being the best at whatever they tried. They didn’t just have a dairy, they had a gourmet Stilton that rivaled the best in England. They didn’t just make preserves to sell on the side of the road, they shipped them to all the best hotels in Washington. And as for their wines—well you already know about those. The important thing is that they did more than one thing, and they made every thing they did special. You can do the same thing.”
Cici spoke carefully, not wanting to hurt her daughter’s feelings. “Honey, I admit I don’t know much about the subject, but I do know that establishing a profitable winery isn’t something you can do overnight. It takes years, sometimes generations, to bottle a decent wine.”
“Right,” declared Lori, and her eyes took on a glint of excitement, “if you start from scratch. If you don’t have the vinifera, or the right soil, or even the equipment.”
Cici mouthed the word vinifera? to Lindsay in amazement, but Lindsay merely shook her head, and kept her fascinated attention on Lori.
“Uncle Paul explained all that to me when he was here,” Lori explained casually, “but I wanted to make sure I knew what we were getting into, so one morning while you all were in town I had this fellow come out from the county extension office to look at our vines. Turns out, his dad was the original vigneron for Blackwell Farms. Can you believe it? And he used to work in a real winery in New York himself, plus he remembered when old Mr. Blackwell built this one, so he knew just everything about it. Did you know, by the way, that this area of Virginia is a close climatological match for the Loire region of France?”
“Thomas Jefferson brought the first vines to Virginia from France,” Lindsay murmured, and Lori beamed at her.
“Right! It was his dream that Virginia would become one of the foremost wine producers in the world. It could have, too, but got derailed by that little Revolutionary War thing. So anyway,” she went on, “the extension agent said most of our Shiraz vines are still pure, and should produce for another couple of years with proper care. Of course, we need to start grafting and replanting now so that we’ll have mature vines to take the place of the current ones, and we really need to expand the orchard by at least six acres over the next two years. But it’s all there in your folder.”
By now even Cici was gazing at her with rapt attention, too caught up even to ask questions.
“As long as he was here,” Lori went on, “and since he did know something about wineries—his name is Dominic something, by the way, nice fellow, and he said you should give him a call if you had questions—I asked him to look at all that equipment down in the old winery. He said it was state-of-the-art for the time, and all it really needed was to be cleaned and polished and it would be ready to go. It doesn’t even matter that all that stuff is over forty years old. In the wine-making business, old is good. In Italy, some of the finest wineries still crush their grapes by hand—or foot, as the case may be.
&nbs
p; “But the best part is,” she continued, “with the winery already set up like it is, and the vines still producing, you can actually use the equipment to secure a small business loan for start-up costs. You’ll have to hire a vigneron to run the place, of course, and laborers for the vineyard, but that won’t be until Year Two. You’ll age and warehouse the wine here, just like the Blackwells did, but there will be bottling, shipping, and marketing costs—but we’re talking Years Three and Four—before you start making a profit. It’s all there in the folder. The main thing you have to worry about right now is restoring the vineyard, caring for the vines, and bringing in some new stock. With luck and good weather, you’ll have everything in place for first harvest by next fall.”
They just stared at her, lips parted, breaths caught on questions they couldn’t quite form, looking like first-year students at a fourth-year lecture. Then Bridget cleared her throat, dropped her gaze to the folder in her lap, and said, “Um, catering. Fine foods?”
“Exactly,” replied Lori with a wide, pleased grin. “That’s exactly what I was talking about. Since you won’t make a profit for three to four years, you’re going to have to look to other sources, just like the Blackwells did. Not all the grapes are good enough for wine—it’s in the folder—so you’ll use those to make your wine jams, Aunt Bridget, just like we talked about. All you need is a commercial kitchen license and clearance from the health department, and with the way you and Ida Mae run this kitchen I don’t think there will be a problem with that.”
Bridget’s eyebrows went up in amazement. “That’s all we need? I thought it would be harder.”
“You can have specialty labels printed up on the Internet for three cents apiece, and your choice of adorable glass jars and lids for under a dollar each. You’ll have to invest in an industrial jar sealer, but even so, if you market directly to the public you’re looking at a profit of six dollars a jar, easy, and it goes up when the jams are part of a gift basket.”
Bridget’s eyes lit up. “Gift baskets?”
“It’s all in the folder.”
Bridget started searching through the folder, and Lori addressed the other two. “I know we talked about a bed-and-breakfast, and you’re right—too much work, too little profit. But have you ever thought about renting out the garden for weddings, anniversaries, things like that? If you offered catering as well, you could make as much in one weekend as a B&B could in a whole season.”
