Chapter 2

There weren't many dishes but Penny had chosen to do them by hand. The dishwasher used what she considered an unacceptable amount of power and water, plus expensive detergents to get the job done. Besides, she had plenty of time.

She had spent the previous hour looking online for a job. Something ... anything ... to make her day more worthwhile.

In the seven months since she had been laid off she had found that there was only so much improvement to an existing system that she could provide.

Home-Maker Penny had turned the house upside down, replaced all of the light bulbs with lower wattage counterparts, began a bulk food buying and storage program and began cooking as much from scratch as possible. She had cut several hundred dollars a month from the budget just by that alone.

And little things that added up to a few cents here and there like doing the dishes by hand, making her own laundry detergent, and drying the clothes on a clothesline outside all added up to thirty or forty dollars a month. However, it was mind-numbingly tedious, and a part of her itched to negotiate in a boardroom again.

Shaking her head as she scrubbed a stubborn stain off of the plate in front of her she looked out of the window at the back yard. It wasn't huge but there was quite a large area back there that needed periodic mowing during the summer. The previous summers they had hired it done but the thought of the extra one hundred dollars a month when the power bill was the highest made her cringe. Their margin between black and red was very very slim.

She wondered if she should look into a reel mower that she could use instead of buying a gas powered mower. The reel mower would be good exercise and she could get back into shape since she had let her gym membership lapse back in December. She ached to take a few of her winter pounds off anyway.

Penny dried the now clean dish and set it into the dish drainer to wait until she was done. She hummed along with the radio in the family room as she went, trying to keep herself entertained.

The song that she had been listening to ended and a commercial came on. Her mind blanked out, as most Americans are accustomed to tuning commercials out. But something about it caught her attention. The commercial was for a garden center, she realized. She hadn't caught the name of the business, and the details or even the jingle were forgotten, but the thing that stuck was "garden."

She looked out the window at the large expanse of grass. Her mind's eye imagined long rows of corn and beans and trellises of tomatoes. She pictured herself in the kitchen with a pressure canner putting up jars and jars of produce for the winter, just like her grandmother had done when she was a child. Without taking her eyes off the back yard she washed and dried the last dish and set it in the drainer. Then she went outside to survey the area, her mind buzzing with ideas.

The back yard was rather plain. There was a medium sized maple tree near the back corner and beyond the small chain-link fence there was a forest, the remnants of the wild land that the subdivision had been carved out of. But except for the deck outside the kitchen and a flowerbed under the family room window, there was just a gently sloping uniform sheet of green to the fence.

She kicked at the sod beneath her feet but realized that she knew nothing about the composition of soil whatsoever. It might have been as useful as pulling her car to the side of the road and raising the hood. Yes, that is indeed an engine ... I think...

Yes, that is indeed dirt...

But would it grow anything?

Was it all rock beneath the uniform sod?

She truly had no idea. Time to try out her Farmer Penny costume.

She knelt and tugged at the sod until she made a hole. It was unnaturally tough, tougher than she might imagine for. Finally she got a small hole in the ground and with a stick that she had found somewhere she prodded the depths of the loam. It seemed to be the right color. Dark is good right? Is this dark enough? She felt inadequately uneducated and frowned, disliking the feeling. Maybe I should go read up before I tackle anything.

She stood up and stretched, looking at the expanse of lawn around her. It wasn't an acre but she believed that it could grow a good amount of food to supplement their grocery bill. Every penny counts. She smiled at the pun.

She turned to go into the house and check online for gardening information when she heard a noise. She couldn't identify it and it was quick and gone, just the sound of the wind through the bare-branched trees and traffic on a distant road. In the middle of the day in a suburb filled with working couples, she was practically alone. So the sound, followed by voices made her somewhat curious. She turned. It seemed to have come from the woods.

She walked slowly toward the gate at the back corner beneath the maple tree and stood silently, listening intently. Part of her said it was nothing. But another part of her, bored to tears from the cabin fever that house-wives are all too intimately familiar with, said just see what it is. Curiosity got the best of her.

With some effort she opened the little gate. It hadn't been opened at all from what she could tell since they had moved in four years prior. The bottom of it was buried in a carped of dead leaves and took some force to push them out of the way. Finally she gave up trying to open it all the way and squeezed through. Once on the other side she carefully picked her way through the underbrush and sea of dead weeds and leaves from the winter until she came to a trail. The trail was well worn. It looked like it was used rather regularly in fact. She turned around and was astounded that she could clearly see not only her kitchen window but also her bedroom window as well. She had never put curtains in her bedroom window because there wasn't supposed to be anyone behind them. Not that there is ever anything worth seeing, she mused rather sourly.

Which way to go? She looked one direction, then the next. Both ways showed equal amounts of promise and lack of promise. Finally with nothing to go on she chose her right solely because it led downhill.

She weaved in and out of the trees following the footpath for what seemed like forever until she came to a clearing. The path came down the hill and crossed a small stream in front of her, coming back up into the clearing. It was here that she found the strangest sight. She stopped to watch, afraid she was disturbing something and took it all in.

The meadow, or what had been a meadow was roughly the size of her own back yard. Spread across it at various angles and curves were lengthened mounds of soil. The dirt was exposed, piled over what appeared to be old rotted logs and twigs.

Then she saw where the noise had come from.

The couple appeared to be in their mid thirties. The woman was average height, of average build, but the part that was evident was her flaming red hair. She wore shorts and a tank top which seemed a bit revealing for the season.