Esther
Better Homes and Gardens
Admiral Biscuit
Wysteria was first out of the truck. She had a trustworthy face and a knack for talking to humans, as long as she didn't freak out about the state of their yard.
Jon followed—he was their driver, and he also got to talking money when it came to that. Ponies were good at lots of things; contracts wasn't one of those things. When they saw a yard in need, they wanted to fix it, regardless of any profit to be made.
Ponies weren't used to doorbells, so Wysteria knocked. On the frame of the door; her shoes didn't mix well with screen doors.
Jon was still coming up the walk when the door opened. It was an older woman, maybe in her seventies, and she saw him first, before looking down and noticing the pony on her doorstep.
She crouched down, reaching a hand uncertainly for Wysteria's mane. That was okay; none of the ponies minded being petted.
“Good afternoon, madam,” Wysteria said, causing the woman to jerk back. “We're here on behalf of your lawn.”
“My . . . my lawn?”
“That's right. We can fix it.”
“Fix it?” Confusion crossed the old woman's face. “How do you mean?”
“We tend yards and gardens, ma'am,” Jon said. “A&W Lawn Service.”
“I already have a mowing company.”
“Oh, you'll find we're far more than that.” He tilted his head towards the beds surrounding her porch. “We take care of all your landscaping needs.”
The woman narrowed her eyes. “Are you a salesman?”
Jon nodded. An honest answer was the best one. “For the best yard service in town. I can show you our brochure.”
“Are those Apollo Lilies?” Wisteria pointed a hoof out in the garden.
The old woman nodded. “Planted them back when I could get around better. They're still doing well.”
“They're beautiful,” Wysteria said. “And if you don't mind me being forward, we can help you bring your flower garden back to what it should be.”
They didn't really have an established sales pitch. It worked better that way. Jon took his cues from Wysteria, not so much from what she said but from her body language, and by the way her ears were focused and her tail was loose, she'd found a fellow gardener.
There was no need for the brochure, so he slipped it back in his pocket and faded back on the porch while the mare and the old woman got to know each other.
As soon as the two moved into the yard, he was sure there'd be a sale.
By the time she invited them in for lemonade, it was only a matter of finalizing the details. Unfortunately, this was where he had to be a bit firm.
•••
“Fifty dollars a week.”
Wysteria shrugged. “She hasn't got a lot of money.”
“How long is it going to take to get everything in shape?”
“Not more than a day,” Sweetberry said from the back seat. “From what I can see from here.”
Jon shook his head. “Do I have to tell you ponies how money works again?”
“Listen here, mister.” Wysteria bopped him in the nose with her hoof. “It's not about money.”
“It is about money. You gotta pay for food and your house and gardening tools and gas for the truck and insurance and—“
“After the first week, it won't take too much. Twice a week, not more than an hour each time, 'cause she's already got somebody to do her lawn.”
“—you gotta factor in that we can't work in the fall or the winter.”
Wysteria leaned against the door in the truck. “She signed the contract, and those are eaglely binding.”
“Legally.” Jon sighed. “Yeah, they are.” The problem with ponies was that they'd undersell every job. It had seemed like a good idea to expand business by hiring a crew of ponies for landscaping; rich people would pay through the nose for the honor of having pony groundskeepers, and the higher he set the price, the more they'd want them. He had a lock on the earth pony market, at least for now, and he could make enough to retire by forty if only he could get them to see how much money they could make working five easy days at mansions.
After their first mansion, they'd rebelled. For a week, the idea of an unlimited flower budget had been too much to pass up on, until the flowers had to be selected for exclusivity and color and size; the final straw had been a fancy garden party which had nothing to do with the garden whatsoever, and everything to do about the fact that the Arnaults had ponies and nobody else in their neighborhood did.
Wysteria had put her hoof down, and that was the end of the dream of quick riches for Jon.
Not that he could complain too much. The Arnaults were difficult to work with, and frequently made special requests which he still felt obligated to honor. At least he'd been smart enough to include in the contract extra fees for work done outside normal contracted hours.
And, if he were being completely honest, a larger quantity of smaller contracts added up to the same number as a small quantity of big contracts, and realistically was a more steady income. But they were still undercharging.
“It's not about the money,” Tiddlywink said. “That's a lesson you have to learn.”
He crossed his arms. “No, I don't.”
“Yes, you do.” Wysteria bopped him in the nose. “Now it's lunchtime.”
“There are other houses in the neighborhood,” he protested. “We could get more sales in before—”
“We will, but not yet. You said it yourself, this house is going to be too much work, and look at all the houses around it. None of them are any better. They're all full of weeds.”
“Fine.” He shifted the truck in drive. “But I get to pick where we go this time.”
Jon stopped in front of the old woman's house, and his three pony passengers disembarked from the pickup truck. Rather than go to the front door, they went around the side of the house—he stopped paying attention to them once they disappeared in the backyard. He got out his phone and started checking his emails.
The old woman was in the backyard, kneeling on a foam mat. Several small piles of weeds trailed out to her left.
“I thought I'd clean up a bit before you . . . girls arrived.”
Wysteria nodded. “Esther, these are my friends Sweetberry and Tiddlywink.”
“I'm pleased to meet you.” She set her gardening shears down and started to rise, but Wysteria shook her head.
“It's okay.” She glanced around the garden. “It's looking better already.”
“Thank you.” Esther sat back on her heels as the ponies surrounded her. “I . . . I've never had to pay for a gardener before. I used to take such pride in my garden, but it's hard now, I can't keep up on it like I used to.” She sighed. “I still get Better Homes and Gardens, and—you aren't going to replace this, are you?”
“No, ma'am. We wouldn't think of making any changes. Not unless you want them.”
Sweetberry nodded. “We're just going to help you restore your garden to its former glory.”
“Tell us about it.”
“Oh.” Esther looked at the beds around her. “Where shall I begin?”
“Wherever you want.”
•••
By sundown, no weeds had been pulled. The few that Esther had removed before the ponies arrived still lay on the lawn where she'd left them, while the rest remained in the flowerbeds.
The ponies had shared several glasses of lemonade and a plate of homemade cookies, and then they'd gone back to the truck, hooves still clean.
Jon was right where they'd left him, slouched down in the driver's seat. “How'd it go?”
Wysteria shrugged. “We made good progress today.”
“It's only gonna be a couple of hours next week,” Sweetberry added. “Just like I thought.”
“I didn't see you come out front.”
“There wasn't any need.”
“Really.” Jon could see the weeds from where he sat.
What he couldn't see was Esther. And it wouldn't matter if he had; he wouldn't have understood.
“Really.” Tiddlywink grabbed her seatbelt with her teeth and dragged it across her chest, pushing it into the buckle. “They're practically taken care of.”
I don't believe you, Jon thought. I don't believe you did anything at all. He couldn't say that out loud, not without risking the loss of his entire crew, and with it the loss of the Arnaults. There, he'd seen them working plenty hard; there he'd seen the dirt and sweat in their coats at the end of the day. Here, they were clean and dry.
Still, fifty dollars was fifty dollars. Maybe they'd spent the entire day weeding the back gardens, maybe they'd cleaned up before getting into the truck. As long as Esther didn't call complaining about them, he'd be satisfied.
•••
By the time they got back to the shop, Sweetberry was sound asleep in the back seat. Tiddlywink shook her awake, and despite his offer to take them directly home, they walked to the bus stop at the end of the block.
He closed up his shop, which was easy enough. A few morning jobs had required the use of his riding lawn mower—at some homes, he mowed while they worked the landscaping—and it only took a few minutes to refill the tank and grease everything, and then he locked the doors and drove home, waving to the ponies as he passed the bus stop.
•••
Much to Jon's surprise, the front garden at Esther's house was weed-free when he arrived. The three ponies piled out of the truck and headed out back, while he pulled out his cell phone to catch up on emails.
Wysteria led them around back. Esther was working around her lavender, carefully trimming the stems of the bush when they arrived.
“It's already looking better,” Wysteria said.
“Thank you.” Esther stood up and brushed some dirt off her knees. “Would you like some lemonade?”
“Not just yet.” Sweetberry replied. “We've got work to do first. You've done so much already, and it wouldn't be fair for us to not help you.”
“You said you planted this rosebush in 1965?”
“Not that one,” Esther said. “The first one died, oh, I think it was about 1972. That was a bad year for bugs, and I did what I could, but it wasn't enough. I planted this in its place the next year.”
“That's right, and you used its flowers for your daughter's wedding.”
“I did.”
Wysteria moved around the plant, carefully nosing at the stems, while Tiddlywink began to nip off the few weeds which remained around it.
“I gave her a cutting, too; I planted that at their house.” Esther smiled. “I wonder if it's still there? They moved away in 1997—or was it 1998? Her husband accepted a transfer to California. They've got a beautiful house there, I helped them plant their yard. That was before Earl had his stroke, you know.”
She knelt down beside the ponies, reaching into the garden herself. “He was from the south, and he always wanted a magnolia tree, but of course you can't grow one here, not a proper one. The blossoms just can't survive the frost. Magnolia trees and Spanish moss and honeysuckle . . . oh, I can picture it in my mind. We'd planned to go south when we'd retired, but then Michelle had her baby and we wanted to stay close. I remember one year when he was just a toddler, he got in the vegetable garden—you know how children can be—and we caught him eating a leaf off the rhubarb. Well, he turned out okay, I don't think he ate all that much anyway.” Esther pointed to the far side of the yard, near the garage. “Maybe you can still see the edges of the garden. Next year, I should plant it again—I don't suppose you'd be willing to help?”
“Of course we would,” Wysteria said. “I think that falls squarely in the terms of our contract, even if Jon doesn't think so.”
“Trees, too,” Sweetberry added. “We'll help you with those if you want. There's not enough room here for a proper orchard, but a few more trees would really look nice.”
“They would, wouldn't they?” Esther frowned. “Oh, but I don't know if it's worth the effort. I'm getting on in years.”
“That's no reason not to,” Sweetberry said. “When you think about it, most trees are gonna outlive you anyway.”
“I suppose you're right. Over there, when I was younger, I used to sit out in the backyard and read. It was always peaceful. It was like being in the forest, almost.”
“Let's think about that,” Wysteria offered. “For the springtime. It won't be too much extra to manage, really. They'll need a lot of watering at first until the roots take, but after that they'll hardly require any effort at all.”
“Yes.”
“And maybe a little vegetable garden, too. We can put that in, right back by the garage. Herbs around the edges, if you want.”
“It's been a few years,” Esther confessed, “but I still get the Burpee catalog every spring.”
Wysteria nodded. “Think about that. It'll be a bit more work, but you can do it with just a little bit of help.”
“I can.” She crouched down and rubbed Wysteria's mane. “You ponies are making me feel young again. Now, come up to the house and have some lemonade before you go.”