Less than a week later, Luna and Viv stood over that same map.
“Here’s where I think the squashes should go,” said Viv, wielding a familiar stick.
“Should we put the zucchini in a patch next to the squashes?” asked Chuck.
“Shouldn’t we give them a little more room to grow?” asked Birch.
“I think that if we try to give all the vegetables lots of room, we’ll run out of space,” said Patsy, who sat very close to Birch.
“I think we’ll have enough space as long as we don’t get carried away,” Viv said. “We have a bit of expansion room here.” She pointed at the area on the map near the field where they held concerts.
“Yeah,” said Strange Brew. “That should work.”
“Fine,” said Patsy. “As long as all of you are okay with it.”
“Okay. I think that covers most of the vegetables,” Chuck said. “This should give us quite a nice farming area.”
“One other thing,” said Luna. “I’m hoping that this is the year we begin to put in fruit and nut trees. Can I borrow that?” she asked Viv.
Viv handed her the stick. Luna pointed to an area at the edge of the fields, right where the hillsides began. “I think we could take out some of these old hemlocks and put in apple, peach, pear, pawpaw, mango, walnut, and filbert trees.” She then pointed to an area on field proper. “We could put some raspberry and blackberry bushes over here, along with a strawberry patch and maybe a grape arbor.”
“Wow,” said Birch. “This all sounds great. I love fruit and nuts.”
“Absolutely,” said Strange Brew. “Me, too.”
“Wait a minute,” Patsy said. “You were kidding about the mangos, right?”
“Just seeing if you were paying attention,” Luna said.
*
“Mushrooms,” Birch said. “We should grow mushrooms.”
“Must rooms?” said Patsy, in a very sleepy voice. “Must we?”
“We’ve got all these logs lying in the woods,” Birch said. “We could use them to grow lots of mushrooms on.”
“Can it wait until the morning?” Patsy asked. She rolled over so that she faced Birch. “Pretty please?”
“Sure,” he said, but he lay awake for the next hour or so just thinking about it.
The next morning he approached Luna and Viv about his thoughts.
“I think that’s a great idea,” said Viv. “We can add that to the mix of what we produce.”
“We’re already sprouting and krauting,” said Birch. “Why not ‘shrooming’?”
“We could use the front of that area where I want to put in the fruit and nut trees,” Luna said. “I wish we could grow mushrooms on hemlock logs.”
Chuck had walked into the room as Luna was talking. “Shrooms,” he said. “What kind of ‘shrooms were you thinking of growing?”
“I don’t know,” Birch said. “Probably Portatakee and Oyster of the Woods. Or something like that.”
“Sounds good to me,” Luna said. “Why don’t you order some and we can start growing them as soon as the last of the snow melts?”
“Sounds great,” said Birch.
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