Page 111 of The Lady and the Duke

Lydia wastriumphant as she finished the work of pruning the orchard. She stood back one afternoon and admired her work. All the dead wood had been removed. The branches were pruned to encourage new growth and to maximize fruit yield. Any diseased trees had been removed and, with the pruning, more light, air, and rain could penetrate to the earth around thetrees.

Now it was time to start digging the holes for the new fruittrees.

Edwin stood beside her as she showed him the stakes she had put indicating where each treewouldgo.

“And how many new trees are there?” heasked.

“Eighteen,” she answered. “My next task is to start digging the holes forplanting.

Edwin turned to her. “You are planning to dig the holesyourself?”

She looked at him with some surprise. “Ofcourse.”

“Oh, no. That is too much for you to do alone. Let mehelpyou.”

“Butthepond?”

“It is far enough along that the workers can finish up alone. I do not want your lovely hands calloused by digging holes in thishardsoil.”

She considered that. “Then we shall worktogether.”

“Verywell.”

“And Edwin, there is one other issue I would like tobringup.”

“Yes?”

“When we gardened at home we would take all the kitchen scraps, pruning materials, and dead plants from the garden at the end of the season and dump them all together in a pile, along with generous amounts of horse droppings. We would keep the pile moist and throw earthworms into the pile whenever we would find any, and in time we would take the material that had broken down, and work it into the garden, helping the garden to thrive. I would like to create such a pile for ustouse.”

Edwin beamed. “You see, that is why I hired you. Good knowledge and commonsense.”

Lydia smiled. She could feel their friendship reestablishingitself.

“But how does one go about collecting worms?” Edwin askedlaughing.

“We could start by examining the soil you removed when you made the pond. I feel certain we could find enough worms to start a great pile, and overtime they breed and supply enough for new pileseachyear.”

Edwin was silent for a moment. He seemed to be studying the resurrected orchard. “What a splendid job you have done. Thank you.” He turned and looked at her. “You deserve a day off. How about we take a ride? I need to inspect the Earl of Albemarsh’s property for him. He resides in London and is asking for my help on amatter.”

“That sounds delightful,” Lydiareplied.

“I know. Let us make a day of it and I shall instruct the cook to make a picnic for us and we can spend the day doing practicallynothing.”

“Yes, but I must run home first and change into my ridingcostume.”

“Very well. Is half an hourenoughtime?”

“Three quarters of an hour would bebetter.”

“Then, I shall meet you at thestables.”

* * *

It was a lovelylate summer day. The sun had already started declining toward autumn, and the sunlight created a rich golden haze on the horizon, but the sky was filled with large, white fluffy clouds which occasionally obscured the sun, keeping the day from becomingtoohot.

Edwin’s task on the Albemarsh property was to evaluate a pond that had been drying up. The Albemarsh property manager had no idea what to do, so the Earl had asked Edwin to takealook.

Edwin explained his task to Lydia, and then said, “It occurred to me that you might have some ideas about how to correct thisproblem.”