Return to Virgin River (Virgin River #19)(22)

Kaylee followed Jillian inside and met Kelly, who appeared to be up to her elbows in dough.

“Bread,” Jillian said. “I love it when she bakes bread. You can smell the aroma all the way to the coast. If you’re interested, we can see the gardens first, then the house.”

“Oh, I’m interested. I want to see anything you have time to show me.”

“Good, I love showing it off.”

Sitting in the garden mobile next to Jillian, Kaylee bounced around the huge gardens behind the house. They were like a quilt of many colors and textures, lush and looking tasty. Most of the outdoor gardens were picked clean except for the melons, pumpkins and some late squash. But there were several greenhouses in the back, filled with raised beds that held fruits, vegetables and flowers. “Mostly edible flowers that chefs like to garnish their plates with. I just started doing that a couple of years ago.”

“How do you get your stuff to the restaurants? Because unless I missed something, there aren’t a lot of restaurants around here.”

“You didn’t miss anything. These flowers and heirloom vegetables go as far as Seattle and San Francisco via FedEx. They’re tender little things that won’t last long; they go overnight.”

The back acreage was lined with fruit trees and berry bushes. “The berries come in in spring, finished by the first of August, but the apples come in later. I don’t rely on that apple crop for much, except to satisfy the deer. I sell them out on the roadside stands—we have two large ones now. Kelly uses the fruit and berries in her creations; she ships a lot of pie filling, jams, jellies and that sort of thing. I’ve added to the berry bushes and paid the price—the bears love berries. I have to scare them away. I have an air horn they don’t like. Having wildlife in the yard can be fun until you get a sample of their mischief. A mama bear with a couple of cubs will break into the greenhouses or turn a garden mobile upside down. I really can’t afford to be welcoming.”

“They don’t scare you?” Kaylee asked.

“Not really,” Jill said. “But I don’t get up close and personal. I’ve seen the size of their claws. And I’ve seen the evidence of their shenanigans.”

“Could you put up a big fence?” Kaylee asked.

Jillian laughed. “Have you ever seen a bear up a thirty-foot tree? There’s no fence to keep them out. We do have fences around some of our outdoor gardens to keep the deer out, plus I use a lot of bunny repellant to save my lettuces and root vegetables. The bears, I’m afraid, go where they please. Thus the air horn. It’s very loud.”

Kaylee was in awe of the terraced plots that adorned the hillsides surrounding the house, separated by narrow roads to make movement easy. Every now and then Jillian would stop the golf-cart-size garden mobile and pick some fruits or veggies and throw them in the back of her little truck. There was everything from apples to tiny potatoes; there were several rows of grapes with only a few still on the vine. She pulled up a few honeydew and cantaloupe from their vines and added them to her catch.

“The pumpkins will be ready for Halloween,” she said.

When they got back to the house, Jillian showed her around, and by far the biggest treat was the second-floor sunroom where Colin had his studio. His wildlife paintings circled the large room, and he was at work on a huge painting of a buffalo. “God, that’s breathtaking,” she said. “Do you sell them in a gallery?”

“Most of them go to a small gallery in Sedona, Arizona, owned by an artist who has become a good friend. I do some special orders and sell some from my website. It’s keeping me out of trouble,” he said.

There was a third floor that had a couple of guest rooms and to Kaylee’s surprise, a staircase to the roof and a widow’s walk. “We don’t know where the idea for a widow’s walk came from, but you can see all of Jilly Farms and beyond from up here. The first year I was here, I came up here all the time. I would call Kelly; we didn’t have a satellite connection yet and it was the only place I could get really good reception. And I would watch over my little farm.”

When they went back downstairs, Kelly had some snacks prepared for them. They talked for a while about their various artistic pursuits from Kaylee’s writing to Kelly’s culinary skills. And when Kaylee was finally leaving, Jillian handed her a large plastic laundry basket full of the things she’d picked on their tour of the gardens.

All of them made sure she knew she’d be welcome back anytime. “I can’t wait to come back,” she said.

She drove directly home from there, and as she pulled in she saw Landry was sitting on his porch steps, holding a bottled water. When she parked in front of her house, he wandered over. She lifted the hatch. “I’ve been to Jilly Farms. And look what I got!”

“Awesome,” he said, looking through the fruits and veggies.

“I’m going to have a veggie dinner.”

“Do you have a ham hock to go in the beans?” he asked.

“No, of course not—I wasn’t expecting this.”

“I do. I’ll get it for you. You can’t have a pot of green beans without pork of some kind.”

“Then you have to join me for dinner!”

And there was that grin. “That would be great. I’ll make sure Otis stays home.”