The Best Garden in Boone County award was to be given out in two days, and I was not to be outdone. This was my year—I could feel it deep in my gut, at the pit of my stomach.
We’re talking the holy grail of garden awards. Best garden of the year in this part of the country? Major bragging right. This was something women and their husbands bragged about to one another all the time. To be named best garden in the whole county was the equivalent of being chosen Best Actress at the Oscars for all of us folks in Boone County. For the past several years, Mrs. Patty Carmicle had received the accolades, and you could always hear her husband Jerry blabbering on and on about it to his fellow lawyer friends at their company parties. Rick, my husband, would always come home and tell me what he said.
“My Patty has the most beautiful daisies,” he would say. Or, my favorite, “she’s always out in her garden tittering away. She’s a shoe-in this year.”
Patty wasn’t a shoe-in this year. I was going to bring home the title even if I had to kill someone to do it.
I’d spent hours and hours in the dirt and sweltering heat, making sure all my flowers and vegetables were watered, trimmed, and growing the way they were supposed to. I checked everything once, twice, three times, maybe four to ensure my garden was perfect. Flawless. I dug my hands in dry dirt, pulled up armies of weeds with raw, bloodied palms. My hands sure knew the lengths to which I would go to win this competition with my dry and brittle fingertips always dancing on the edge of cracking open and bleeding. The knuckles were no better.
Patty, JoAnn Derryberry, and I were the only contestants who’d bothered to enter the competition this year. After last year’s fiasco with Miss Kelly Smith’s tomatoes, (a terrible tragedy involving her family and the judges ingesting some form of ricin that had been injected into each fruit), everyone was too scared to plant anything. Blame was passed around the community; everyone thought someone in the contest was the culprit, and it certainly had to be the case.
The blame was pointed at Patty first. The gossip had spread like wildfire around town that Kelly had something special in store in her garden that year. And instead of taking second place like a good sport, Patty took matters into her own hands and poisoned her tomatoes. She was not going to lose her first place spot. But when police investigated the claims, nothing came of it. So, blame was passed to me. I was interrogated, investigated, poked, and prodded. My house was searched, but My history was squeaky clean. There wasn’t anything to find here.
I kept cameras in my garden in hopes that whatever happened to Kelly Smith’s tomatoes would not happen to my plants and flowers— I would not be sabotaged like her.
This year my prized piece was my dodder plant. Known for its parasitic nature, dodder plants liked to feed on other plants by attaching themselves to their hosts via a special organ, the haustorium, and withdrawing nutrients from them. The judges would wonder why I grew such a villainous, leafless plant in my garden when it very well could take over and rule the rest of my flowers and vegetables, sucking the life out of them as well. The truth is, I let it feed on my chrysanthemums and hoped that it wouldn’t spread any further than them. I was taking a huge leap of faith; one I wasn’t sure was the best decision, but I knew it would earn some major points in creativity.
I glanced over at the brownish yellow, slender, stringlike stems of my dodder plant wrapping around my orange and yellow chrysanthemums. It looked like an easel full of paint had exploded on the plants; colors expanded in each crevice, bright and vibrant in the sunlight bearing down on them. The dodder’s flowers, in nodulelike clusters made up of tiny yellow or white bell-like united petals, mixed with the chrysanthemum blooms, swallowing them whole.
The sheer boldness of my choices would definitely make me this year’s shoe-in. Forget Patty and her plain, white daisies. Hello over-the-top parasitic plants and new beginnings.
——
The day of the judging, we all gathered around the Boone County courthouse square. I glared at Patty and Jerry, hoping they could sense the hatred radiating from my body. She had taken this title from me for five years, but this year would be different. I could feel it in my bones.
Rick looped his arm around my waist and nuzzled his nose into my ear.
“You’ve got this in the bag, Shelby,” he whispered, sending a chill down my spine. No matter what I did, Rick was always there to support me.
You’re damn right I’ve got this in the bag.
I took his hand in mine, squeezing it lightly as Horace Hayes, the judge executive of Boone County, bellowed into the microphone, alerting the crowd before him that the judging was soon to start.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” Horace said, a wide, white smile spreading across his thin lips. His teeth were so brilliantly white, they almost looked fake. “And welcome to the annual Boone County Garden Competition. We’ll be taking a look at three gardens today: one from Mrs. Patty Carmicle, another from JoAnn Derryberry, and the final garden from Mrs. Shelby Lyons. Join me in congratulating these three fine young women for their hard work this year preparing their gardens for the contest.”
All of maybe twenty people clapped their hands in celebratory applause. There wasn’t a great turn out this year, most likely due to Kelly’s tomatoes. Usually there was a huge crowd and the courthouse square was filled with people. What had changed this year?
“Are we ready for this year’s competition to commence?” Horace asked the crowd and everyone cheered once again.
I forced a smile, feeling a sense of pride course through my body, surging at the center of my chest. I had suffered blood, sweat, and tears for this moment. It was my time to shine.
Each contestant was to set up a time for Horace to visit their garden and evaluate it. Usually a small crowd of people followed him to the sites. He judged on the following scale:
We were also to provide him with a sheet of statistics and explanations on the plants growing in our gardens.
I certainly took a chance with my dodder plant and its sustainability practices. The plant itself was only sustainable if it were feeding off another plant’s growth. My chrysanthemums wouldn’t last forever, and I would soon need to find it a new host. But my main goal was hoping the dodder plant would give me an edge. Hopefully Horace would understand that as I explained in my fact sheet that I would give him later.
“Thank you, everyone, for the generous ovation,” Horace said once the applause had died into a continuous whisper. Eyes roamed through the crowd from me to Patty to Joann. The scrutiny was palpable. No matter how much I wanted to win this competition, one thing I didn’t like was being under the constant attention of people in our community.
“Mrs. Patty Carmicle’s garden judging will take place at 1:30 p.m., Mrs. JoAnn’s will take place at 2:30, and we will wrap up the evening with Mrs. Shelby’s garden at 3:30 p.m.”
That left me approximately two and a half hours to prepare and to clean up any last minute blemishes. My heart thudded faster in my chest. I looked Rick dead in the face, squeezing his hand a little tighter, his green eyes showing hints of longing and excitement. I knew mine must’ve looked quite dark because Rick’s excitement didn’t last very long. The wrinkle line across his forehead disappeared with his smile.
“Let’s go,” I said, pulling him toward our truck parked a few places down from the crowd. The old, rusty Ford was patiently waiting for us, ready to take us home.
I didn’t care to see Patty or JoAnn’s garden—they had nothing on mine.
This was my year to win.
——
As Murphy’s Law states, if anything can go wrong, it will.
That seemed to be the case when Rick pulled into our gravel driveway, rocks crunching underneath the truck’s tires. From the road I could see my garden, and I could definitely see that my chrysanthemum’s had started to wilt and brown, signaling the end of life for the flower. The dodder plant had sucked too much life out of it too soon.
I climbed out of the truck before Rick even shifted into park and ran over to the dodder. It was firmly grasped onto the chrysanthemum, so there was no way I could pull the dying flower away from its grasp before Horace arrived.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I muttered under my breath, hoping Rick couldn’t hear the urgency in my voice. The last thing I needed was his concern too. I loved his support in my endeavors, but sometimes I just needed to figure things out on my own.
“Everything okay?” Rick asked, placing his hand gently on my shoulder. I shrugged him off.
“Yeah,” I sighed. “It’s fine. Just go inside. I’ll be there in a minute.”
Instead of putting up a fight, Rick made his way into our house. He knew better than to bother me while I was working. And he definitely knew better than to ask about any minute details of my plants.
I moved the dodder around, placing strands of it strategically to hide the browning and wilting of the chrysanthemum. When I was finished, no one would ever know the difference.
But the more I moved the plant, the stiffer it got, like it was trying to fight against me. I pulled at a few strands and they wouldn’t budge. I was careful, though, because the dodder strings were fragile and any one of them would shed off if I wasn’t too careful.
As I got closer to covering all the imperfections of the chrysanthemum and moving one last section of the dodder, a sharp pain scattered throughout my hand. I yanked my hand back, wincing, pulling it to my chest.
When I looked down, I saw a small pinprick in my thumb like a needle had punctured my skin, drawing a tiny droplet of blood to the surface. I must have nicked it on one of the strings of the dodder. As I wiped my hand on my jeans, though, the shooting pain traveled from my hand to my forearm, sending sharp bursts of agony through the bones and muscle. I let out a cry of pain, gripping my wrist. What was happening?
It was you, wasssssn’t it?
Something whispered near me, like a snake slithering out of its hiding place. I looked around, my head jerking from left to right. For a second I thought maybe Rick had come back out to check on me, but he was nowhere to be found, likely still in the house.
You poissssoned her fruitsssss
The voice was light and wispy yet terrifying, like it was almost in pain. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It sounded so close, but no one could be seen for miles. The sharp pain in my hand jolted its way up the length of my arm, stopping at my shoulder. I let out a cry.
Sssshelby you did it
The voice whispered again and my heart started pounding in my chest.
You poissssoned the tomatoesssssss
I kept looking around me, turning circles amidst my flowers, and could see nothing. I searched frantically, looking down at my dodder plant to see it squirming and moving, sliding between chrysanthemum blooms and dried up leaves.
Cheater
The voice started again, and at this point I realized the sound was coming from the dodder plant. It was somehow talking to me.
Cheater
It said again and I looked down in agony. I was still gripping my wrist because the pain in my arm had not let up. “I-I—” I couldn’t speak, something was making my tongue swell up like a piece of thick, dry cotton stuffed into my cheek.
You don’t dessserve thissss award
I started crying, tears streaming down my face in full, thick waterfalls. My legs were wobbly, but I managed to move my feet, backing up slowly. Before I could go any further, the dodder plant flung one of its strings toward me, wrapping around my ankle, preventing me from moving any further.
“Please,” I begged. “What’s happening?”
The pain traveled to my chest next, making my heart feel like it was going to explode. The terror of the dodder plant and fear of the uncertainty piled onto the aching pain in my body was enough to send me over the edge. I fell down to my knees, clutching my hurt arm to my chest.
Cheater
The dodder whispered again, but this time I couldn’t speak. Something inside of me was inhibiting movement. My swollen tongue filled up my mouth.
Cheater
I was yanked backward by my ankle. The dodder plant was slightering and squirming in the air, strands and strings hovering just above my face. I could feel strings wrapping around my body. First, my legs, and then my torso. My neck was last, and I thought for sure it would try to suffocate me, but the strings only wrapped around my lightly just to hold me in place. All around me chrysanthemum buds and blooms drifted slowly to the ground. Hues of yellows and oranges peeks into my periphery, and for a moment I felt safe. Content, even.
But when the stem of the dodder plant appeared above me, hovering just over my chest, I let out one last garbled wail just before it plunged straight into the center of my chest.
The cheater issss mine now
I could feel the stem pulsing inside of me, drinking my blood, feeding on my life force. A squelching noise would sometimes leave the gaping hole in my chest, sending spurts of blood into my face. Somehow I was still breathing.
I laid there, motionless and terrified. I couldn’t scream or yell or cry or anything. I was forced to lay here and feel the dodder suck the life out of me bit by bit.
The dodder was right though—I had been the one to poison Kelly’s tomatoes. All it took was a little bit of ricin and a few people to get sick enough to be hospitalized. She was disqualified and I was closer to winning Best Garden of the Year.
“Shelby!”
I heard Rick scream from the porch steps, and the next minute he was kneeling down next to me. He tried to cut the dodder off of me, using a pair of kitchen shears, but the strings and strands were too thick and too tough to cut through.
“What have you gotten yourself into, baby?”
I passed out before I could even think of an answer.
——
I woke up in the hospital three days later with an unbearable pain in my chest. I somehow survived the attack from my dodder plant, but not without battle scars. Where the strings and strands had been so tightly wrapped around me, giant red welks adorned almost every inch of my skin. My entire body was so sore, it was difficult to move.
The doctors said I was close to death when the ambulance rushed me to the hospital, and if it wasn’t for Rick calling 911, I would be dead.
Too bad so fucking sad, I guess.
Because when the police started looking into my dodder plant, they had to dig up my garden and destroy every last inch of my hard work. They pulled apart my hydrangeas and ripped away my cucumbers one by one. It was all gone by the time they were finished—nothing but dirt and leaves. But what they also found buried within the roots and soil was a syringe and a vial of ricin, emulsified into a yellow liquid.
Not only did I wake up with a massive hole in my chest, but I also woke up handcuffed to my hospital bed with no one in sight—only an officer standing guard at my hospital room. As far as I knew, Rick hadn’t visited me.
What was even worse, though, was to discover that my garden had been disqualified from the contest. Horace Hayes had arrived at my house just as they were toting my lifeless body to the hospital. The police had started ripping up my garden by then.
I laid my head back on the pillow behind me, letting out an agitated sigh, when I heard a sharp ding—a notification on my cell phone. Someone had made a post on Facebook and tagged me in it. Of all people to tag, why me? Surely word had gotten around already?
I opened the app to read the post anyway.
The 2022 Best Garden in Boone County was narrowed down to two people Friday when our very own Mrs. Shelby Lyons was found guilty of tampering with Miss Kelly Smith’s tomatoes. That poor, poor girl. Hopefully she can find peace now.
The competition between Mrs. Patty Carmicle and Mrs. JoAnn Derryberry was a close one, but Horace Hayes ultimately made the decision.
Our 2002 Best Garden in Boone County belongs to Mrs. Patty Carmicle for having the prettiest daisies around! Congrats Patty!
Patty
Fucking
Carmicle
With a surge of anger, I threw my phone across the room and it slammed into the wall, shattering to pieces.
Too bad the dodder didn’t suck the life out of me when I needed it most.