She looked up to wave a grubby trowel at Joel as he got out of the car and came across the lawn toward her. She was on her knees on a pad made of oilcloth tacked over squares of an old matting rug. She wore a green smock that had absurd appliqued flowers on the capacious pockets. Joel greeted her with his usual good humor, but she was conscious that there was a trace of a shadow at the back of his eyes as he sat down on the edge of the wheelbarrow and surveyed her with some amusement. “Of course,” he observed as she dug a hole, placed a small seedling in it and drew the loose soil firmly about its tiny roots, “expert gardeners will tell you that transplanting should be done in the afternoon so that the seedlings will have the cool of the night to fortify them for the next day’s sun.” “These fellows are so sturdy they won’t mind an hour or two of sunshine,” she boasted. “Anyway, Ellen Hogan, who gave them to me, showed me how to make an individual sunbonnet for each one of them out of newspaper.
