Backyard Read Online Free Page B

sweet-smelling, medium-sized shrubs, adorned with dozens of menacing, erect, white flowers that looked like wide-mouthed blowguns aiming their poison darts directly at her. And that divine, seductive, and deadly scent!
    â€œAngel’s trumpets!” Dr. Sproot gasped.
    â€œAren’t they just gorgeous!” Marta said. “I want them for my garden!”
    â€œDon’t be an idiot, Marta! They are deadly poisonous, that’s what they are! And mind-altering!”
    Dr. Sproot had to catch her breath. She felt faint. She was inhaling angel’s trumpet fumes; did that mean she’d start hallucinating?
    â€œGet away, Marta! Quickly!”
    Marta scampered to where Dr. Sproot had moved, farther downwind of the bushes, where Dr. Sproot felt they could breathe more freely. Marta was exhilarated and breathless with the joy of discovery. That annoyed Dr. Sproot, who figured it was more appropriate that she should be shocked.
    A noisy rattletrap of a car pulled up suddenly along the Payne Avenue curbside.
    â€œRun!” Dr. Sproot screeched.
    Then, forgetting her studies, her dignity, and Marta, she clomped clumsily along the edge of the woods down another slope that contoured steeply down to Sumac Street. Halfway down the slope Dr. Sproot heard a thud, then slipped and stumbled. She quickly pulled herself into a ball, which she had read somewhere was a way to avoid serious injury when you’re tumbling down a hill, and rolled all the way to the street. She picked herself up, unhurt, at the curb, and brushed off the thatch and pine needles that were clinging to her hair and clothes. Then, she looked around to see whether she was being observed. There was Marta, sitting next to the weeping willow that had abruptly arrested her departure. Her legs were splayed out in a way no one her age could consider demure. She was furiously rubbing her forehead and moaning.
    Dr. Sproot could not be bothered by Marta’s juvenile antics right now because she was fretting too much about what she had just seen. After another perfunctory brushing off, she ignored Marta’s pathetic whimpering and strode off purposefully down the street toward her car.

4
    The Tippler’s Guide to Gardening
    T he Fremonts plunked themselves down in the mesh-fabric deck chairs on their backyard patio and eagerly opened a bottle of their house wine, the excellent 2005 vintage Sagelands merlot.
    There had been a little excitement while they were gone. Cullen, the younger of their two sons, told them a middle-aged woman he didn’t recognize had come to the door rubbing a bump on her head and asking for some ice and an aspirin. She told him she got lost in a daydream, strayed off her usual route, and blam-o, walked straight into the telephone pole out front. He obliged and somewhat grudgingly gave her a ride home, which ended up being in cul-de-sac land more than two miles away.
    â€œAnd her name was . . . ?” Nan said.
    â€œMrs. Daffodil?” George and Nan snorted. “And she had to think about it for a minute when I asked her. She seemed really squirmy and nervous, too.”
    â€œHa!” George said. “That just might be a pseudonym. I wonder if she was on the lam. Social Security rip-off schemer? Gray Panthers dropout gone rogue? Maybe she was casing the joint for valuable, hand-woven tea cozies.”
    Nan chuckled. “Knit.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œKnit. That would be hand -knit tea cozies, George. You don’t weave tea cozies. Hmmm. She was probably just embarrassed about walking into the telephone pole, and wanted to remain anonymous. Remember the time you did that, George?”
    â€œAs if it were yesterday, Nan-bee.”
    â€œAnd you were afraid you had suffered a concussion, but didn’t want to tell anybody because of how foolish it would make you look?”
    â€œI don’t remember that part.”
    â€œProves my point. Memory impairment caused by a collision between