Page 34 of Pick Yourself Up
After a long minute, she sighed and stood back. “I’ll think about it.”
Nodding, he took her hand. “Feel like a walk?”
Boomer bounced to his feet at the word, making them both smile.
Outside, they naturally turned to the front of the property where his gardens and her farmhouse sat.
She gestured to the mess. “Have you made a plan yet?”
He laughed. “Not really. First, it’s going to be hard work to peel back the junk and find the soil.”
“Why don’t we get started?”
“Now?”
She shrugged. “Why not?”
He couldn’t come up with an answer to that. They grabbed gloves, buckets, shears, tarps, and shovels from the barn and headed back.
The long summer days were behind them, but they had at least an hour before the darkness would make it too difficult to do any proper work.
“Where do you want to start?”
Amber’s innocent question had him thinking about starting at her toes and working his way up. Instead, he pointed at the bushes nearest the farm road. “These have to go. Actually, pretty much everything has to go. I’ll keep some bushes and perennials, but everything will have to be moved to their new locations.”
Amber nodded. “I imagine it’ll be easier to start with a clean slate.”
“Always. I’ll set up a couple of tarps. We’ll stack anything that’s considered invasive on top of them. Hopefully, we can gather the roots and seeds from them and stop them from spreading.”
They talked about the plants and his plans as they pulled bushes and weeds.
Beneath the weeds, there were more weeds, with the occasional treasure in the mess. By the time the light dimmed, the tarps were full of debris, and his treasure pile was larger than he would have expected.
The weather called for light rain overnight, which would be perfect for his treasures, but he didn’t want the seeds or roots from the invasive plants running back into the soil with the runoff.
“Can you give me a hand wrapping up the tarps? I want to contain all those plants for the night.”
Amber nodded, and it didn’t take long to wrap them up and bring them into the closest barn. He’d bet Jolie would already have the heavy-duty bags required to dispose of invasive plants, but he’d check on that the next day.
Amber brushed her hands on her jeans. “That was a good night’s work. We made headway with both our projects today.”
Pride filled her voice. He took off his gloves and slapped them against a truck tire to remove dust and debris.
Then he closed the distance between them and put his arms around her. She shuffled in even closer with a mischievous grin. “I think we deserve a reward for working so hard.”
He grinned. “What did you have in mind?”
Instead of answering, she rose on her toes and kissed him.
It was a hell of a reward.
Chapter 9
Clear Things Up
The days passed quickly for Amber. She and Gray split their time between the house and the gardens, depending on the weather. They removed the boards from the windows on the first and second floors. The rooms were wonderful and she could easily imagine them as they could be. After a lot of effort and money.
They’d cleared about a third of the garden space. The pile of what Gray called treasures grew every day. There were many salvageable plants beneath the weeds. Not that she knew enough to recognize most of the plants, but Gray’s excitement when they found new treasures was a delight.
