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had forgotten about Penny until a hiss from the grey cat in the guest bedroom sent Emily wailing and retreating downstairs.
    â€œPenny,” I said, sprinting up to the second floor to comfort the cat, who growled at me.
    â€œOh, dear,” lamented Linda as Emily’s howling hit high gear.
    Moobie’s frame of mind wasn’t much better. Back downstairs, I found her in our bedroom closet, hiding behind an old suitcase that held single socks pining forlornly for their mates. When I picked up Moobie, she twisted her body in a fashion that no other animal could ever duplicate. Her front legs jerked stiffly to the right as her back legs jerked stiffly to the left, then vice versa as her head waggled back and forth. The spasms proved remarkably effective. She slid from my grasp just as I reached the living room. For a large land mammal, she was remarkably adept at avoiding Emily’s lunge. Within seconds, she had discovered a new hiding place deeper inside the closet.
    â€œDon’t chase the kitty,” Shelley told her.
    â€œOh, dear,” Linda repeated.
    â€œI think she’d be fine with us,” said Shelley. “We live in a small trailer.”
    â€œWith lots of closets?” I asked hopefully.
    â€œWe’re just writing down names at the moment,” said Linda. I found myself nodding in agreement.
    â€œI probably shouldn’t take her today, anyway.”
    I shook my head. “She seems a little upset. So does Emily.” The child had started crying again.
    â€œI want to see the kitty!”
    â€œWe’ll get back to you,” promised Linda.
    T HE BUMBLEBEE ROLLED into our driveway. Linda started calling it that right away. Henry, the master gardener, drove a dented yellow car of uncertain foreign origin and age with a black stripe across the sides and an orange rubber ball impaled on each of two antennae. One aerial served a nonfunctioning AM/FM radio. The other put Henry in touch with the world via a two-meter ham rig that allowed him to make completely free though highly inconvenient phone calls.
    â€œI’m on my way over. Over,” he’d told Linda from the supermarket parking lot minutes before his arrival. “I had to buy a camera first. Over.”
    I hid inside the house, peeping through the curtains, as Linda conducted Henry around the yard. She moved expansively from flower bed to flower bed, her red braids flapping as she gestured toward the plants while Martin followed unsteadily, as if walking were a hobby that he had just taken up. When he stepped into the middle of the largest front-yard bed and pointed at a patch of greenery, Linda waved her arms until he lifted his left tennis shoe and retreated to the lawn. Bending down, she tried propping up a squashed Oriental poppy.
    Henry lagged behind, making entries in a spiral notebook that he’d extracted from a bulging envelope. Each time he finishedrecording an observation, he meticulously clipped the pen to his shirt pocket, then wiggled the pad until he managed to wedge it back inside the envelope. His slowness may have exasperated Linda, but it gave me an opportunity to pick the best vantage point for witnessing the same maddening procedures repeated in different sections of the yard. Linda would stiffen as he delivered a judgment on her floral aesthetics and walked into a grouping to demonstrate his point. Next would come the trampled flower, the attempted resuscitation by Linda, and the master gardener’s notations regarding the plants that had so far survived his visit.
    Eager to see the expert at close quarters, I caught up with them in the backyard as Henry shook his head at the triangular bed just outside the basement door. “We’ve got problems, here,” he muttered. “The plants are too crowded again. You’ll have to give the roots more room. You’ve read Thomas Merton on the virtue of solitude? The soil doesn’t seem to have sufficient aeration,