Planter Boxes

Mac sat in the yard, with the hose in a bucket, soap on himself, Cheese, and a pile of Cheese’s most prized toys and other favorite things. Del rode up, slightly wobbily, on their roller skates. “Hey! What are you two doing today?” Mac waved a soapy arm. “Hey! I’m cleaning Cheese’s house, and his stuff, and him, and me too.” Mac said laughing, and pointed, to a damp, but scrubbed, Cheese house, now brighter, on the outside, the smell of damp dog and soap wafting over on the breeze. Del leaned on the fence where some of Cheese’s blankets, scrubbed and washed, hung in the sun to dry, and reached down to scratch behind Cheese’s ears. His head was damp, and he wagged his tail at the attention, flicking water with each wag. Del laughed. Mac shook some soapy water off of his arms and dumped out the bucket onto some wildflowers near the road, the dry ground soaking up the water quickly. He turned on the squeaky spigot to fill the bucket back up to rinse some toys off, and went to get a box of things off of the porch. “Want to help me touch up the paint on Cheese’s house?” he held a cardboard box with brushes and jars with paint, a hammer, nails, a saw, and some pieces of wood pulled off from some pallets they had found back on a trail behind the convenience store. “I’m also going to fix some of my aunt’s planter boxes. ” Del peaked inside the box. “Roe gave me some paint from his brother’s workshop that we’re allowed to use, he had some baby food jars from when he watches his cousins, so I didn’t have to take the whole paint cans.” There were a few colors in the box, and now that it was scrubbed off, Cheese’s house had some clean, but bare spots. Del sat on the porch step, and began to untie the doubleknotted, sparkly laces on their skates.

“Are we going to paint the flower boxes afterwards too? Or leave them plain?” Mac looked at the partly collapsing set of flowerboxes his older cousin had built for his aunt one year for Mother’s Day, or her birthday, or some holiday he couldn’t quite remember. One had soil leaking out a gap. Another had the top broken and jagged. Another was still mostly together, although a few boards had begun to splinter and crack. “I can’t remember if they were painted to start with, these were here since I was a baby. I’ll ask my grandma what she thinks.” He ran up the stairs and inside briefly, while Del took off their socks as well, stuffed them into the skates, and hung them off the porch rail and out of the way, wiggling their toes at Cheese. Del put the rest of the semi-soapy items in the bucket, dunking them to rinse, and brought the chewed up, worn and repaired toys out, wrung them out, and set them in the sun. Small blankets, pillows, and bandanas got the same treatment. Cheese looked on happily, stretched, then lay down in a sunny spot as well, eyes half open, partly watching Del, partly falling asleep. Roe ambled down the street kicking a faded soccerball, his backpack bouncing on his back, half open. “Hey!” Del said as he walked up, “Your bag is open, your stuff is gonna fall out.” “Oh. Thanks!” He pulled the bag around, and rummaged inside, then zipped it, setting it on the ground. “What’s going on?” Roe asked? “Me and Mac are going to fix up some of the stuff in the yard. You wanna help?” Del pointed to the box with the paint, “He said you gave him the paints, so we can repaint Cheese’s house.” Roe looked at Cheese, “Sounds nice for you little bud!”, and set the soccer ball over by the porch, “Sure.” Del pointed at the flower boxes, “We’re going to fix those too, Mac went inside to ask how his grandma wants them.”

Roe looked at the flower boxes, “If we’re going to fix them, we should move the dirt to something else while we fix them shouldn’t we?” Del looked around, “Hmmm, probably.” They found a small wheelbarrow on the other side of the porch. As they were bringing it around, Mac and his grandma came outside. “We wanted to talk about it out here, because I think we want to surprise my aunt.” Mac semi-whispered. His grandma carefully walked down the steps, and over to the planter boxes, bending down a little to examine them, then looked over at Cheese’s scrubbed clean house. She nodded her head, smiling. “It’s looking nice out here.” She said. She examined the boxes again, leaning over them, and looked over at the wheelbarrow nodding. “Looks like you all have a good idea how to get started fixing them. If you painted them, what kind of paintings would they be?” Mac looked at the boxes, “We could just paint them plain colors. Or we could paint them with flowers on the outside. Or we could paint them with the things that are inside, like roots, and worms and what lives inside, like this isn’t a dog house, this is the flower and worm house.” His grandma smiled. “I like that idea, but I like the flower idea too.” I think it’ll be ok to paint them once you give them some repairs. You two gonna help out?” His grandma turned and smiled at Mac’s friends. “Yeah! Want us to put the plants that are in there somewhere else for right now, or is it ok to put them in the wheelbarrow too?” Del asked. “Wheelbarrow is fine, as long as you’re gentle with them.” She said and turned to go back inside. “You all be careful not to bang your thumbs or anything when you’re hammering out here.” She headed back up the porch steps and inside the screen door.

“Hey!” Roe said to Mac, “I have my tape player in my backpack, want to listen to some music while we’re building?” “What tapes did you bring?” Del asked, as Mac nodded, and Roe bent down to dig around in his backpack. He pulled out a tape player, “I don’t have any batteries, but it has a plug in.” Mac pointed to the side of the house, “We can plug it in where the Christmas lights go.” He went to plug it in, and Roe handed Del a couple handfuls of tapes to browse. “That one is pretty good, it’s from a band this guy at the park by the library had last summer, that one is a mix tape my brother made, that one is one my brother’s old girlfriend gave me for my birthday last year, that’s one those people who had that cool yard sale a couple months ago, they had that tape, and it’s really good.” Del considered the many options, and Mac walked back over. “I think I want to try this tape, is that ok with you? Here are the ones Roe brought.” They held out the one from the guy’s band in the park, the hand drawn and collaged then photocopied art on the small cassette cover had stood out to them. Mac considered the cassette, and nodded, putting it into the cassette player and turning on the music. Mac looked at the flap of the cassette cover, “What’s a theramin?” Del perked up, “It’s that weird space sound. That’s cool! Thanks for bringing this tape over Roe!” Mac turned the volume up a little, to pick out the weird space sound. “But what IS it?” he asked Del. Del laughed, “I don’t know. I just know its something that makes music. I have a different tape where someone plays that.”

They continued gingerly removing soil and dirt from the boxes to the wheelbarrow, then getting the scrub brushes ready to clean the boxes. Cheese had moved over to look over their shoulders, tail wagging. Roe and Mac unpacked pieces of wood, a measuring tape, and started to measure the boxes and the wood pieces. Roe finished measuring on the first box, and got a scrub brush and began to clean it. Another board fell off. Cheese snuck under Roe’s outstretched arm and gingerly grabbed the board in his mouth, running a few steps back to check on it. “You silly guy, give it back.” Del said reaching for the board, and Cheese jumped away with the board in his mouth wagging his tail. Del laughed. Mac reached through the pile of boards and found Cheese’s ball near the dirt and bushes. “Hey! Want your ball instead?” He held it out for Cheese. Cheese had laid down to chew on the board, but watched Mac with the ball. “Toss it to him.” Del suggested, and Mac threw it in a gentle arc. It bounced near Cheese’s front paws which held the board in place, and he stopped chewing to sniff at the ball. Del reached over and gently too the board back, now coated in dog slobber. Cheese watched as they held it in their fingers, taking it to the hose, and then took the ball, and ran around the yard, and over to Roe, tail wagging. Roe looked up from what he was doing. “Hey, you want me to throw that for you?” He took the ball and threw it, and Cheese raced off after it. Del brought over the rinsed off, less slimy, muddy, tooth-marked board to Roe.

“I think I’m gonna scrub it clean first and then finish measuring.” He said. The three of them scrubbed and measured and marked as thermin, drums, and keytar blared, and wailed, and singers cooed and yelled. They took turns throwing the ball for Cheese, and pretending to throw the ball for Cheese, and retrieving chewed on boards from Cheese. Del bobbed their head to the music while the worked away the afternood. They finally stood together next to a wheelbarrow piled high with a small blueberry bush, some daffodil and iris bulbs, and some large shrubby chamomile. In front of them the clean, partly intact flower boxes stood, pieces warped and splintered, nails rusty. “I think we should sand them.” Del said. Mac got out a piece of crumpled sandpaper from the cardboard box and began to get the large splinters off of a planter box. Roe took a piece of measured wood, and a small hacksaw from the box. “Will you hold the other end for me Del? I don’t want it to move around.” Del carefully held the piece while Roe sawed along the marked lines they had made. They put the pieces into a pile. “We’ll need to sand the pieces too, before we put them on the boxes.” Roe and Mac began to try and fit the puzzle of pieces together against the planter box, and Del wrestled open a box of nails.

Together, they managed to patch up the holes and replaces the warped and cracked pieces with minimal bandaged fingers, taking turns holding pieces in place and hammering. Del started the scrubbing process on the second box, and Mac started on the third, while Roe measured pieces that were missing and marked on the boards they had taken from the pallet with a stub of a carpenters pencil. Del finished scrubbing and while the wood dried out a little in the sun, switched with Roe to saw the wood while he held it. Roe got the sandpaper and started taking splinters off pieces and Del took the sandpaper to the planter box, to smooth it out. “Can I have a piece?” Mac said, pointing to the sandpaper. Del handed him some and he moved the coarse grit across the woodgrain, knocking large sunfaded splinters away. Del and Mac wiggled some freshly sawn pallet into place on the top and sides, fixing a spot where soil had spilled out, hammering the board pieces in. Del and Mac looked at the final two boxes. “Some of the nails are crooked. Do you think my aunt will notice?” Mac picked a little at a nail that had gone in slightly slanted. Del shrugged. “I dunno. Do you want to take it out and hammer in a different one?” Mac considered, then used the hammer to pull it out, and carefully lined up the nail and hammered it in more evenly. “That was the only one that was sticking out really bad. Now we won’t scrape ourselves or anything.” Del nodded, and Roe lifted each box from the corner to look at the bottoms. “They turned out really good. It looks like they’ll hold all the dirt for a while now!” He held a box aloft, turning it different ways to look at. Mac grinned at Del. “Are you ready to paint?” Del grinned widely. “Yes! Is it ok if I start with the touch ups to the paint on Cheese’s house? I’ll start on a planter box after I finish that.” Mac nodded, “Yeah! Here, grab some jars and a brush.”

Del picked up a handful of needed items in their shirt like a pouch with a paintbrush in their teeth and walked over to the side of the yard to look at Cheese’s house. A large doghouse, cleaned inside and out stood there, the outside covered in now faded paint that looked like Swiss Cheese. Del set the jars down and saw that Cheese’s dog bowls were next to his house. Del picked them up and carried them over to the house. “I don’t want to get paint in Cheese’s food.” they said, then grabbed a piece of paperbag from the cardboard box to put under the jars in case they spilled. Del picked up a jar of yellow paint, carefully opened it, dipping in the brush, and began to touch up the colors on Cheese’s house.

Mac and Roe stood before the planter boxes, each taking one. “I think a bunch of butterflies and ladybugs and caterpillars and worms and rolly pollies and stuff are what I’m going to paint.” Roe reached down for a jar. Mac nodded. “That sounds awesome!” He still stood, looking at the planter box. “I think I might paint some smiling plant people.” Roe looked at him, “Do you already have a comic about it?” Mac shook his head. “No, its not from a comic, its just something I think my aunt might like. “Cool!” Roe said, and handed Mac some brushes.

A couple of hours, a few cassette tapes, two popcicle breaks, and a soccer-with-Cheese break later, the three stood in front of three freshly painted planter boxes: each having a few tooth-marked boards sanded and painted, one with smiling, hand-holding people who had flower heads, one with what could have been a starry sky, but could also have been a field covered in many kinds of wildflowers seeming to give off a happy colorful energy, and one covered in all the crawly fun critters that made their homes in the planter boxes. Cheese’s house had been repainted, it’s bare spots freshly coated, and all three had taken turns painting his house and signed their names in the corner. Del picked up a glass of water from the porch steps and took a gulp, then offered some to Mac. He pointed to his cup, and walked over to get a drink too as they refilled theirs from the garden hose. They refilled Cheese’s water and food dishes which they had moved away from his house while they worked. He stood in the yard eating and had a drink, and lay down.

Roe, hands on hips and smiled at the planters drying still. “I think my aunt will really like these.” Mac said. Roe nodded. “In a while, we can move the dirt back. We should probably wait until tomorrow to be sure. ” Del looked at the wheelbarrow, “We should put the blueberry bush in the plant people one, I think it’ll match when the berries come in.” They kneeled and poked gingerly at some blue petunia faced people, smiling and holding hands with some purple pansy people. “The paint’s mostly dry.” they said, showing their paintless hand to the other two. “You did a good job with those roses.” Mac said, pointing, “They look real.” Del looked at the box they had painted. “I noticed that roses look like tissue paper that’s crumpled up, so I tried to paint it like that.” Roe tilted his head a little. “I see what you mean. It’s like wrapping paper a little bit.”

Cheese’s house was now bright and vibrant again, perfect for it’s happy occupant. “We should take his toys and blankets inside for tonight and let his house finish drying.” Roe said. “Then tomorrow we can finish putting his stuff back in his house, and the plants back in their planters for your aunt.” Mac grinned. “My aunt went on a trip to see her friend so she won’t be back until next week, it will be a nice surprise for her.” He reached down and scratched Cheese’s head. “Cheese sleeps inside our house anyway, my grandma calls that his summer house.” They all laughed.