A few days later, George and Fred found Luna and Dan scrawling on sheets of paper in the back room of Groovy House. They didn’t seem happy about what they were doing.
“What’s up?” Dan asked when he saw Fred and George.
“Are we disturbing you?” George asked.
“It’s not a great time,” Luna said. “We’re kinda stressed at the moment.”
“What are you doing?” Fred said, trying to get a look at the papers.
“We’re trying to recreate the books,” Dan said. “Tax time is coming up and we don’t have information for them.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” said George.
“The federal government would differ with you on that,” Luna said.
“No,” Fred said. “I think he’s trying to tell you that you don’t need to do all that work.”
“What are you talking about?” Luna said, raising her voice. “We gotta do it.”
“No, you don’t,” said Fred.
“Yes, we do,” said Luna.
“No, you really don’t!”
“Yes, we really do!”
“I’m trying to tell you, you don’t!”
“You don’t understand!”
“No, you don’t understand!”
“Wait a minute!” Dan yelled. “What don’t we understand?”
“You remember that we told you that the Feds raided Cecil Nixon’s office,” George said. “Guess what they found there?”
Dan and Luna stared at George and Fred for what seemed like several moments. Finally Luna seemed to get her voice. “The books?” she said hesitantly.
“The books,” Fred said confidently.
George reached into his briefcase and pulled out a battered green set of papers.
Luna took one look at them and started hugging and kissing Fred and George.
“Whoa,” Fred said when he got a breath. “This is like an accountant’s wet dream. The general ledger as an aphrodisiac.”
“You guys are amazing,” Luna said. “I can’t believe that we got the books back.”
“Believe it,” George said. “And get rid of all these other papers.”
“With pleasure,” Dan said.
*
A couple of days later, the commune was busy, busy place. It was morning and the communards were hard at work.
In the kitchen, Nancy and Will were baking away, preparing for the day’s business. Tray after tray was coming out of the oven and onto the cooling racks. Darren was running the finished product over to the "Chthonic Baked Goods and Yggdrasil Cupcakes" stand which was filling up with pastries.
In the produce stand, Cat and Sal had managed to dig out Dan from under the rutabagas. Chuck and Viv were bringing in all sorts of vegetables that were growing in the gardens in the EcoGreenHouse. The stand seemed crammed with greens and root veggies, from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. It was hard to believe that both stands would be almost empty by the end of the day.
Luna was out in the back by herself, surveying the land and trying to imagine what it would look like when everything would be growing out there, when the fields would be overflowing with all that they had planted.
Marge was taking a break from cleaning and organizing. She just wanted to get outside on such a lovely day and once outside, she wandered over to where Luna was standing. Standing beside her, Marge tried to see what Luna was seeing as she gazed at the fields.
“Look at this,” Luna said to her, sweeping her hand in a large arc. “Soon all this land will be under cultivation. We’re hoping that we can grow twice as much stuff this year as we did last year.”
“You’re going to have to,” Marge said, “just to keep up with the demand.”
“We’re going to need to have a lot more workers to be able to do this,” Luna said. “I’ve put out some notices telling folks all we’ll be up to this years. I’m hoping that these will draw in a lot more new folks very soon.”
“Where are you going to put them all?”
“They can camp way back there,” Luna said. “It will be an in tents experience.”
“Well, I’m just glad to see that the snow is almost all melted.”
“Really. It’s hard to believe but I think that the winter is finally over. It’s time to grow veggies again.”
“Yep. Winter is over. I think it’s really spring.”
“Yeah, I think it’s spring.”
“Finally.”
“Finally.”
“Spring is here at last.”
“Oh, yeah.”
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