Front Yard by Norman Draper

perhaps. Divine intervention?”
    â€œWe’ll take care of the fairies for you,” said George, who was secretly planning to treat them to little saucersful of merlot. Nan made a big show of looking at her watch. She was getting tired of all this fairy talk, and had concluded that this new, reincarnated Dr. Sproot was probably a fraud and definitely a bore.
    â€œGosh, we have to get to work, don’t we, George?”
    â€œWe do?” said George, slouched into his chair, deep in contemplation about these new fairy findings.
    â€œYes! We do!”
    â€œWell,” Marta said. “We have to go, anyway. But thank you for taking on the fairies. And I must say this was entirely Phyllis’s idea. She’s hoping to be reconciled with you. Then, we can all be gardening buddies.”
    â€œWe will take that under consideration,” Nan said curtly. “But you’re just about the last person we’d want to reconnect with, Sproot.”
    â€œI understand that,” said Dr. Sproot. “But try to be open-minded about me. I have changed. I’m trying to change some more. I’m trying so hard to undo the bad things I did to you last year.” Marta tugged at Dr. Sproot’s elbow. Dr. Sproot, as rigid as a tomato plant stake, turned silently and walked, with Marta in tow, slowly back down the steps. Nan was forced to note, approvingly, that neither she nor Marta disturbed the pea gravel.
    â€œStrange,” George said.
    â€œStrange?”
    â€œDidn’t you notice anything strange about Dr. Sproot?”
    â€œEverything is strange about Dr. Sproot, George.”
    â€œSomething in particular I noticed. Marta took her sunglasses off when she was up here on the patio with us. Dr. Sproot never did.”
    â€œSo?”
    â€œI think there’s something in that. I can’t help but think that Dr. Sproot hasn’t really changed at all, but is just going through the motions. Something’s going on behind those Foster Grants that we don’t want to know about. We need to treat her with care, or, better yet, not at all.”
    â€œNo argument from me,” said Nan, who was feeling too good from the gin and tonics to be too concerned about how Dr. Sproot, whom she had humbled with so much ease, might somehow threaten them in the misty, uncertain future. She made a note to file this in her mental “George’s paranoid observations” folder for possible future consideration.
    Something completely off the subject and infinitely more pressing suddenly occurred to her.
    â€œHere’s a treat for you, George. A new plant joke.”
    George groaned.
    â€œHow many Joe-Pye weeds does it take to move a pressure-treated railroad tie? Ponder that while you go freshen my drink, please.”

10
    The True Nature of Things
    A year ago, Dr. Sproot would have scoffed at the notion of supernatural powers at the beck and call of those who knew how to summon them. There had been a dramatic turnaround in her thinking since then.
    For one thing, there was that blight on her garden that had no horticultural explanation. That was Edith Merton’s doing; that bitch of a witch casting her gardening spells hither and yon, and Dr. Sproot knew it was so because she had seen the dire results herself.
    Edith had been rejected for membership in the Rose Maidens, and had not taken rejection sitting down. She had punished each and every voting officer by visiting a gardening plague of biblical proportions upon their gardens. Including Dr. Sproot’s.
    Dr. Sproot had thus been the victim of supernatural extortion, having to pay Edith to undo the curse on her own yard. While she was at it, she figured she might as well pay Edith to take down her archrivals, the Fremonts, big-time. That freak-of-nature hailstorm couldn’t have happened without some supernatural intercession. Then—drat that Edith!—she must have cast a good spell that revitalized the