June’s shovel bit hard into the ground, but not hard enough. She put her full weight on it, and pushed harder. Still not deep enough. Hot, tired, and frustrated, she straightened and looked to see how the other women were doing.
She heard several voices, but could only see Joyce, on her hands and knees hacking at the roots of a shrub, and just a few feet away, Karen, transferring a stickery looking plant into a pot.
Karen looked up at June. “Isn’t it a great day to be outdoors? I just love being in the woods.”
June leaned on her shovel. So far, she didn’t see much to love. Trees, ferns, and bugs. And somewhere lurking about, poisnous, stinging plants. That’s why she was so hot. Karen had insisted that they all wear long pants and sleeves to protect from poison oak, nettles, and devil’s club. Great. She sighed and forced her shovel into the ground again, then leaned on the handle to try and leverage the fern looser. Who would have thought it would be so hard to get a fern out of the ground?
Karen put her pot aside and began digging on the other side of June’s fern. “I’ve been meaning to tell you how glad I am that you joined our group.” Karen was talking about the Elm Street Ladies Tea and Wine Society, all of whom were in the work party today. They were digging up native plants from an area that would soon be logged, and transplanting them to abandoned lots next to the creek in town. The city of Cedarville was trying to restore the stream banks to encourage a dwindling salmon run.
“Um, thanks,” said June. She was just thinking what a mistake it had been to join.
“Let’s take a break, and I’ll give you a little tour of the woods. You’re probably not familiar with the native plants we have around here.”
“Yes let’s do that.” Anything to get out of digging.
“This is Huckleberry. See these tiny berries? They’ll turn purple in the fall. You haven’t lived until you’ve tried Huckelberry pie. Do they have it in Iowa?”
“I don’t think so.” June didn’t have a clue.
“It’s such a shame that they’re going to destroy all this,” said Karen. She pulled at a branch. “Look, this is thimbleberry. It’s not ripe yet, but it’s edible, too.” Karen showed June plant after plant, and while she was impressed with Karen’s knowledge, it made June more aware of what a misfit she was.
When Karen, her neighbor, had invited her to a meeting, June was glad to go hoping to meet people and make friends. She had moved to Cedarville because of a promotion for her husband. With their youngest child halfway through college it seemed like too good an opportunity to waste. But now June was an empty nester, in a strange town with no job, no family and no friends.
“We’re a philanthropic group,” Karen had told her, and June envisioned a genteel group of ladies sipping wine and tea, while discussing auctions and bake sales and other ways to raise money for charity. But she found out too late that the name was a joke. There was no Elm street in Cedarville, and no one drank tea, although Elsa preferred coffee, but only if it was organic. The group’s goal was more than mere charity; they were out to save the world, at least their little part of it, and do it in as adventurous a way as possible.
“We’d better get back to this fern,” said Karen.
June grabbed her shovel and jumped on the blade with all her weight. Clunck. It hit a rock, and she lurched sideways, crashing into a native bush of some sort. Thankfully one without thorns.
“Are you okay?” asked Karen.
June fought her way out of the bush and brushed herself off. “I’m fine.” She picked up her shovel again, trying to decide if this project was as miserable as the dunk tank they had done last month. June had suggested organizing an auction to benefit the PTA, but when Elsa came up with the idea of manning a dunk tank at the PTA carnival, June’s idea was forgotten. No one had been in a dunk tank before, and they all thought it would be a fun adventure. They dressed up like evil cartoon movie characters. June was Cruella DeVille in a thrift store strapless black gown. She didn’t realize that she would have to stay underwater long enough to adjust her dress before getting out every time.
“You had such a great act,” Karen had told her later. “The kids just loved the way you shrieked every time you went into the water. It was hilarious.” Karen had dressed as Scar from the Lion King complete with a black neoprene wet suit.
June shuddered at the memory of her cold clinging dress and the long line of kids waiting to dunk her. She decided that digging plants was less miserable than that. She supposed than meant that things were looking up.
Her thoughts were interrupted when the leader of the work party called out. “I think we’ve done all we can here. We need to have time to replant it all. Let’s get this stuff moved.”
As June was loading a fern into the truck, she overheard the leader complaining to someone over his cell phone. “We didn’t get a very good turnout today. Mostly a bunch of old ladies.”
June dropped her fern into the truck bed with an angry thump. She wondered how many dunk tanks this ungrateful twenty-something had been in.
At the end of the day June was exhausted, but even she had to admit that they had little effect. They had replanted their ferns and huckleberry in the area to be restored, but kids riding their bikes through it after school wore the ground bare, and at night, teens used the lots for clandestine parties. Their paltry efforts couldn’t disguise the years of abuse.
“I wish we had more time, but this will have to do,” said the leader. June felt defeated. She had wanted to make him eat his words.
“Can we work again next weekend?” she asked.
“There are other places to plant, and I have to move on. We scheduled only one day for this area.”
“Well, can’t we do it on our own?”
“I guess you could. The logging isn’t scheduled until fall.”
So the group made it their summer project, planting as people were available. June’s husband hadn’t earned any vacation yet, so she was available every time. She kept meaning to quit the group, but she hated loneliness more than she hated even dunk tanks. At least this kept her busy and if she thought of it as gardening rather than mucking around in the woods, it wasn’t so bad. To make it more interesting, she started figuring out how to plant groups together for a more pleasing effect, just like she would in her own yard.
“We’ve got to dig up some of this rhododendron,” she told Karen one day. “It would be so pretty in the spring.”
“I agree, but it’s too big. It would never survive transplanting.”
That’s when June got the idea to visit a nursery. She meant to get just a rhododendron or two, but when she saw the section on native plants, she spent an hour reading tags, and asking questions. When the nursery manager found out what she was doing, he gave her some plants for free. She hummed a tune as she filled her trunk with oxalis and wild ginger, false Solomon’s seal and bunchberry. When the trunk was full, she filled the backseat, then the passenger seat. She didn’t buy the salal and ferns that they’d transplanted from the woods, but different plants, some that would bloom and turn color; Rhodendron, trillium, and bleeding heart for spring, red currant for the fall. She didn’t tell the other ladies what she’d done. They would probably think she was silly; she felt a little embarrassed about it herself.
The weekend before the logging was to take place, June visited the site where they’d dug up plants. The leaves on the vine maple and alder had turned color and dropped, blanketing the forest floor with orange and yellow. It was sad to think that it would all be gone soon, but at least a part of it would still live along the creek, helping the salmon run to recover. She sat on a log, and as she surveyed the forest, a red shrub caught her eye. She examined it, but was sure that she had never seen it before. It must have been there all along, but was overlooked as uninteresting. Now in the fall, the leaves were vibrant red.
“Fall color,” she thought. She spent the rest of the afternoon searching out the red-leafed shrubs to dig up. It was such a pretty
bush, that she kept one to plant in her own yard. It was kind of cheating, but after all the work she’d put in, she didn’t think anyone would mind.
The next week, her gardener knocked on her door. He led her to the red-leafed bush. “Where did you get this?” He asked.
“Out in the woods. Isn’t it pretty?”
“It’s pretty all right, but it’s poison oak.”
June stepped back. “Poison oak? It can’t be. I planted it myself. Wouldn’t I get a rash?”
“Not everyone’s allergic. You must be one of the lucky ones”
June felt her face get hot, and knew that she was turning as red as the poisonous leaves. She ran for the shelter of her house, and once in leaned against the door and felt tears run down her cheeks. She felt foolish and stupid, and she had the urge to run out to her car and drive straight back to Iowa. She covered her face with her hands. All her hard work was for nothing. She’d planted poison oak all over her beautiful salmon habitat.
She skipped the next two meetings of the Ladies Association. She heard that they were forming a relay team for a cancer benefit. It went all night, and they would pitch tents at the high school track and take turns sleeping and walking. June had never slept in a tent, and she decided that she didn’t want to, and that was that. She started shopping at night when the stores were quiet, and stopped going to the coffee shop frequented by the group. Besides, to get to the coffee shop, she had to drive by the creek, and every time she saw the red leaves, she blushed with embarrassment.
But it was hard to avoid Karen, right next door.
One day she caught June outside. “We could use you on the relay team.”
“I’ve been kind of busy,” June lied.
“Is everything okay with you? I feel like there’s something wrong.”
“Well, to be honest, I’ve decided to quit the group. I really don’t think it’s for me.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but I understand. We’re not for everybody. But I thought you really fit in. You did such a great job planting those lots.”
“The lots were a huge mistake.”
“How can you say that? They’re beautiful.”
"They aren't. I've ruined them." June broke down and told her the story of the poison oak.
When she finished, Karen was silent for a moment, then began to laugh. “June, you’re a genius.” She opened her arms and gave June a huge hug.
And so it happened that the women took on a new project; the most daring and ambitious ever attempted. It was done by flashlight, late at night, with Elsa leaning against a tree pretending to smoke a cigarette, organic of course, while standing guard, watching for police. The rest, dressed in black, worked quietly along the bank of the creek, speaking in whispers as they dug holes. June came by behind, dropping in plants, and tamping down the soil. They worked through the fall; and when the rains of winter came their job was done, and it was time to sit back and watch. It was a slow transformation, but they were patient. As years passed, stream banks and old vacant lots that had been planted to restore salmon habitat, became infested with poison oak. Mothers told their children not to ride their bikes along the creek. Lovers, who used to tryst beside the water, began to filter back to cheap hotels when they broke out with rashes in embarrassing, difficult-to-explain places. And teenagers, who used to party and leave trash to float down the creek, found other haunts. Undisturbed by people, the stream banks grew lush with foliage. Branches arched over the water, keeping it shaded, and cool. Deep mosses soaked up runoff, and held the soil in place, so it didn’t wash into the creek. And every fall, when the leaves turned bright red on certain plants, the salmon came, splashing and thrashing upstream to lay eggs, spawn, and then die, yielding their lives to the next generation.
Even after so many years, June can’t help smiling when she drives by in the fall and sees the red leaves in the underbrush. Her social circle has widened, but she’s still a loyal member of The Elm Street Ladies Tea andWine Association. They meet over wine and organic coffee, still figuring out how to save the world, or at least their little piece of it, in the most adventurous way they can find.
One warm summer night, when they held their meeting on June’s back patio, they started reminiscing about past accomplishments. They refilled their glasses, propped their feet up and told stories. It wasn’t long before someone brought up the salmon project.
Karen raised her glass. “A toast,” she said, raising her wine glass. “Here’s to the most fun we’ve ever had.”
“And here’s to saving the world, even if we have to poison it first,” added June.
Laughter and the clinking together of eight glasses of wine, and one mug of coffee, organic, of course, rose into the summer night.
* * * *
Riding with Ellie