The Summer Book by Tove Jansson

love-in-idleness. Sophia and Grandmother used to walk out to see it. Sometimes it blossomed at the end of May and sometimes at the beginning of June. It had to be viewed at length. Sophia wondered why it was so important, and Grandmother said, “Because it’s the first.”
    “No, it’s the second,” Sophia said.
    “But it always comes up in the same place,” Grandmother said. It occurred to Sophia that all of the others did, too, more or less, but she didn’t say anything.
    Every day, Grandmother would walk around the island in order to keep track of what was coming up. If she found a piece of uprooted moss, she would poke it back where it belonged. Since she had a hard time getting on her feet again whenever she sat down, Grandmother had become very skilful with her stick. She looked like an immense sandpiper as she walked slowly along on her stiff legs, stopping often to turn her head this way and that and have a look at everything before she moved on.
    Grandmother was not always completely logical. Even though she knew there was no need to feel sorry for small islands, which can take care of themselves, she was very uneasy whenever there was a dry spell. In the evening she would make some excuse to go down to the marsh pond, where she had hidden a watering can under the alders, and she would scoop up the last dregs of water with a coffee cup. Then she would go around and splash a little water here and there on the plants she liked best, and then hide the can again. Every autumn, she collected wild seeds in a matchbox, and the last day on the island she would go around and plant them, no one knew where.
    The great change began with some flower catalogues that came for Sophia’s father in the mail. For a while, he read nothing but flower catalogues, and finally he wrote to Holland and they sent him a box full of bags, and in each bag there was a brown-and-white bulb in a bed of light, protective down. Papa wrote for another box, and this time they sent him special gifts from Amsterdam: a porcelain wooden shoe that was really a vase, and several of the house bulbs, which were called something like Houet van Moujk . Late that autumn, Papa went back out to the island alone and planted his bulbs. And all winter he went on reading about plants and shrubs and trees in order to learn as much about them as he could. They were all of them delicate and pampered and had to be handled scientifically and with great care. They could not survive without real soil and water at specific times. They had to be covered in the autumn so they wouldn’t freeze, and uncovered in the spring so they wouldn’t rot, and they had to be protected from field mice and storms and heat and frost – and the sea, of course. Papa knew all that, and perhaps that was why he was interested.
    When the family returned to the island, they had two boats in tow. Huge bales of real black inland soil were rolled ashore and lay around near the water like sleeping elephants. Cartons and bags and baskets of plants wrapped in black plastic were carried up to the veranda, along with shrubs and whole trees with their roots in sacks, and hundreds of small peat pots full of delicate sprouts that would have to live indoors at first.
    Spring was late, and there was sleet and storm every single day. They fed the fire until the stove shook, and they hung blankets in front of all the windows. They piled the suitcases against the wall and made narrow paths among the plants that stood huddled on the floor to keep warm. Occasionally, Grandmother would lose her balance and sit down on some of them, but most of these straightened up again. They stacked firewood around the stove in rows to dry, and hung up their clothes from the rafters. And the poplar tree, the cement, and the shrubs were out on the veranda, under plastic. The storm continued, and by and by the sleet turned to rain.
    Sophia’s father woke up every morning at six o’clock. He built up the fire and made