Backyard by Norman Draper Page B

years. The last time was the trip to Hawaii—but the beaches at Waikiki, the volcanic fissures of the Big Island, and the enchanting rain forest of Kauai had left them feeling empty and unsatisfied.
    â€œYou know where I wish I was?” said Nan as they dutifully clicked away with their cameras at a giant plume of molten lava that spewed skyward. “Sitting in the backyard, watching the roses open up, with a g-and-t in my hand.”
    â€œYeah,” George said. “With a big slice of lime . . . Who needs all this lava stuff anyway?” So, much to the chagrin of their children, who had loved Hawaii, and had wanted to reprise that trip with others to equally interesting and exotic locales, that was pretty much the end of any traveling of note for the Fremont clan.
    On average, in the spring and summer, and into the early fall, Nan and George would spend six to seven hours a day, weather permitting, in the backyard. That counted mowing, planting, transplanting, watering, raking, fertilizing, mapping out changes and new features, and just enjoying themselves sitting on their patio, either alone or entertaining guests.
    The exceptions were Tuesdays and Thursdays, when afternoons were relegated to running errands. Other than those, a normal day would find George and Nan sipping their morning coffee on the patio and capping off an afternoon with a few strategically timed drinks—Sagelands merlot vintage 2005, of course, and the incomparable Bombay Sapphire gin. If the weather held up and the mosquitoes and yellow jackets behaved, George would fire up the grill in the evening. Then, they’d enjoy an alfresco dinner on the patio with whichever of their three children were free from variable summer work schedules or the lure of their interminable movable feasts with friends.
    It was generally between three and four thirty in the afternoon when George and Nan regretfully abandoned the backyard for the squalor of their respective offices. George would pound out greeting card doggerel for any and all occasions, and design inventions. He had sold one of those—The “Whirl-a-Gig Bubble Blower”—to a major toy manufacturer for $350,000 five years ago. Nan toiled away meditatively with knitting needles and yarn as a locally respected maker of custom purses. Her creations had even made their way up the chain from consignment stores to high-end department stores such as Cloud’s and Deevers.
    The $350,000 wasn’t going to last forever. Nan and George agreed that, with children entering college and a big mortgage still remaining on their house, they would have to ramp up their search for some more lucrative ways to earn money than making women’s handbags and banging out greeting card prose.
    They soon discovered that job prospects for people who want to reserve most of their day for backyard work and relaxation were limited. They would keep looking, they told themselves, at the leisurely pace that best fit their lifestyle. There was no rush; something would turn up. Besides, who had the time when the duties of the backyard grew so demanding! They made charts that plotted the dates of each plant’s blooming and each tree’s leafing, from the smallest impatiens to the loftiest silver maple, then compared them with the logs for the four previous years during which they had kept similarly detailed records. Those notebooks also contained dates and times of plantings, fertilizings, and waterings, as well as when and where the Miracle-Gro was applied.
    The Fremonts’ annual calendar started as soon as the snow melted and the agonizingly slow appearance of buds and flowers began. They watched the big thermometer nailed to the clematis-bearing trellis flirt with fifty, embrace it lovingly, then soar to a balmy sixty. Once the last killing freezes retreated into the past, George opened up the water valves and carried the hoses slung over his shoulder to screw into the outdoor faucets,