Margot sighed. “Thanks, Dillon. I feel better.”
Convinced that Margot was out of danger, Dillon wrapped a bath towel around her shoulders. “Better not go back outside again today.”
“What about the irrigation—”
“Never mind about that.” Dillon shook her head. “It’s not worth dying for, Margot.”
“You mean you’d care if I perished?”
Dillon couldn’t help but roll her eyes. “Well, as long as you don’t plan to kick the bucket right now, I’m going to go back out to work on it.”
“Thank you, Dilly-Dilly.”
Dillon felt both rattled and relieved, but she refilled her water bottle and, with sun hat on, returned to the south field. After an hour or so, she came back to check on Margot. Then, reassured she was just fine, Dillon returned again to the irrigation project. It figures, she thought as she worked through the afternoon. Once again, Margot started something she can’t finish. And even though Dillon didn’t think Margot got heatstroke on purpose, it was hard not to feel vexed.
As the afternoon shadows grew longer and the air cooled significantly, Grandpa came out to check on the progress. “I hear Margot got too much sun.”
“Yeah.” Dillon stood, rubbing her sore back.
“Nice of you to help her.” He looked over the rows. “Looks like you’re doing a good job too. I laid the sprinkler system in Marie’s garden. It was similar to this. I can connect the lines to the water and set up the timer.”
“Great.” She pointed to the row she was working on. “This is the last of the emitters. Then it should be ready to go.”
He nodded. “We’ll run a test.” While she finished the last row, he went to work hooking it up to water, and they both finished about the same time.
“I’ll turn ’er on,” Grandpa said. “Then, unless we spring a leak, we’ll go get ourselves some supper and check it later. Won’t hurt to give the soil a good soak since the lavender’s coming tomorrow.”
Dillon watched him set the timer, then looked over the field with trepidation, hoping that it wasn’t going to explode or turn into a water park. But other than a few misdirected emitters, nothing spectacular happened. She and Grandpa adjusted the emitters and agreed it was a success.
As they walked to the house, Dillon asked what they should do about the plants coming tomorrow. “I don’t think Margot should be out in the sun too much. But now I don’t see how she’s going to get that lavender planted.”
“Yep. I think you’re right.”
“I’ll help as much as I can, but that’s a lot of plants.” She did the mental math. “I guess if I planted one every five minutes, that’d be twelve in an hour—I’d be done in ten hours or so.”
Grandpa laughed. “And then we’d be treating you for exhaustion or heatstroke.”
“Not if I paced myself.”
“Well, rest assured, Dilly. When I saw your mom was beat, I called in some help. Got a team of teenage boys coming first thing tomorrow morning. They’re from the church youth group and need to earn money for summer camp. I’m guessing they’ll finish up by noon. All you need to do is cook ’em up a good lunch. I promised the youth pastor we’d feed ’em.”
“I’ll gladly do that.” Relief washed over her as they went inside. Grandpa was no fool. He’d probably known all along that this project was too much for his somewhat unmotivated daughter. But, seriously, did he really plan to spend the latter part of his farming life growing pumpkins and lavender?
CHAPTER
7
To Dillon’s surprise, Grandpa already had breakfast going the next morning. “Thought we could use hotcakes today.” He expertly flipped a golden disk.
“Sounds great.” She went to the coffeepot, hoping it would wake her up after another uncomfortable night’s sleep.
“Believe it or not, your mother is already up.” Grandpa handed her a plate of hotcakes.
“Seriously?” She sat down. “She did this on her own?”
He chuckled. “With a little help. Anyway, she’s out there with her nasty-smelling green drink, waiting for her work crew.”
“Well, I’m impressed.” She reached for the maple syrup.
“Hopefully the boys will get here before the lavender plants. That way they can help unload the truck.”
“And hopefully Margot will avoid the sun today.”
As they ate breakfast, Grandpa talked about his pumpkin patch plans, and it was plain to see his enthusiasm was growing. “I’ve been thinking about this fall. Might be fun to set out hay bales and some fun and games for the kids when they come out.”
“Wouldn’t Grandma love that?” Dillon knew most of his motivation was out of respect for his wife.
“Speaking of your grandma, I took a peek at Marie’s garden yesterday afternoon. Nice work, Dillon.”
“Thanks, but after reading her garden diary, I can see it’s a little late for a lot of the vegetables Grandma used to plant.”
“Well, being that she’s not here to can and freeze ’em this fall, might be just as well. That garden can really produce.”
“Yeah, I remember. But I did transplant the tomatoes—the ones that survived—and I planted some lettuce and radish seeds . . . and a few others. So at least we can have salad—in a while. For the time being, there’s not much else to do out there.”
As Dillon got up to refill her coffee mug, she questioned herself . . . What was she doing here? She appreciated her time with Grandpa, but it didn’t really take both her and Margot to help him out of his slump. He seemed to be doing just fine now. And although she’d enjoyed the garden work and helping around the house, it wasn’t as if she were really needed here. Thankfully, the hardest part of the lavender project would be done by the end of the day. She rubbed her aching back, grateful that the teen boys were coming to help.
“I’ll bet you’re sore from yesterday.”
She simply nodded as she sat back down.
“How’ve you been sleeping? Is the sofa comfortable enough?”
“It’s okay.” That wasn’t exactly true, but she didn’t want him to feel bad.
“I was thinking we could set you up a bedroom in my den. It used to be my bedroom back when I was a boy and I’d—”
“No, Grandpa, I don’t want to take your den. All your agricultural books and farm records and everything are in there.” She tried to think of a different conversation topic. “You know, the best night of sleep I’ve had in ages was in a pretty unconventional place.”
“Where was that?” He swiped a forkful of hotcakes through the syrup.
“Strangely enough, it was this little trailer park in Wyoming. Just last weekend.” She explained about getting trapped between the two vehicles hauling vintage trailers. “Well, it turned out that this place rented trailers by the night too. And I got to stay in this darling little yellow trailer. And it had the most comfortable bed ever. With fine linens that smelled like sunshine. So peaceful and quiet. It was truly magical.”
“Fine linens in a camp trailer?” He shook his head with disbelief. “Last time I slept in a camp trailer, we were elk hunting and all I had was a smelly sleeping bag and a couple of snoring hunting buddies.”