“Splendid view, isn’t it?” Eudora said. He turned to find her watching him. “Do you have a favorite plant?”
“Everything I know about plants comes from Tom, from his tales of plant folklore. Ivy always appealed. In Celtic tree astrology, ivy is a tree—the strongest of them all. At Tom’s suggestion, Ella had ivy in her bridal bouquet to represent endurance and fidelity. Mother, who believes ivy belongs in churchyards, was quite horrified.”
“I often wondered why you folks chose not to rip up the ivy on your property. To most people, ivy is little more than a parasite.”
“Tom taught me that it symbolizes survival—the ability to overcome all odds.”
Eudora nodded. “Seems I learned something from you today, son. But oh, would you look at that!” A young man dashed past, carrying a backpack and wearing outrageously high stilettoes. “Only a man would wear heels to a garden.”
“It would seem so.” Felix laughed—a stolen moment of pleasure. This was another reason he loved the heart of Durham: the downtown pulsed with creativity, especially in historic Black Wall Street, where he worked, with its art deco buildings, funky cafés, and nonsensical one-way system that could appeal only to a Londoner.
He stopped by a spreading magnolia, its twisted branches whispering, Come climb me. Tom would have loved it, would have created a whole world of make-believe in its boughs.
Eudora kept walking. “And now I’m taking you to the best part,” she called over her shoulder. “The Blomquist Garden, started in 1968 by the first chair of the botany department at Duke.”
With the cold stinging his cheeks, Felix jogged to catch up. For an older woman, she walked at a fair lick. “And what makes it special?”
“Nine hundred species of native plants. I have a feeling you’re someone who will appreciate that we grow the real beauties here,” Eudora said. “Not the gaudy sun perennials that want to flash everything they’ve got like cheap hookers. You have to look hard to find the pockets of beauty in my garden.”
“Your garden?”
But Eudora was no longer listening. She strode ahead, slowing down when they entered an intimate fairy-tale forest. The path narrowed and switched to pale stone. Crazy paving, Tom would have called it—stone slabs haphazardly slotted together in a way that defied time, feet, and the extremes of weather. The formal, structured sweep of the Historic Gardens was replaced by a hint of controlled but wild beauty. Above the towering hemlocks, the clouds broke apart to reveal slashes of blue sky.
Eudora was right—so many pockets of beauty if you looked hard enough: trailing catkins and clusters of reddish pitcher plants that looked like rhubarb stalks with curling ends. (Such fascination he’d had for carnivorous plants after Tom had shown him a picture of a Venus flytrap in Encyclop?dia Britannica.) A dead stick jutted up through the leaves; the sign next to it read “Northern Catalpa.” He would research that on the Web when he got to the office. See if he could find a picture of it in full leaf.
“Here, smell this.” Eudora had stopped by a small, unimpressive tree, but as Felix moved close, he spotted tiny pom-poms of reddish blooms. He had never seen anything quite so weird or wonderful. Ella should definitely plant one of those.
“Hmm.”
“Witch hazel.”
Birdsong surrounded them, and they ambled along a gravel path that meandered down a short flight of steps.
“This railing . . .” Felix reached for a red wooden handrail so shiny it glowed.
“Magnificent, isn’t it? Believe it or not, I helped with the sanding. Heavens to Betsy, that was some job. Several weeks of eight-hour-a-day shifts.”
Of course he believed it. Nothing about Eudora surprised him.
“Red cedar,” Felix said. “Long lasting and slow to rot.”
“And always the first tree to colonize when the land is no longer farmed. Very common in the North Carolina landscape.”
“What’s the finish?”