"So you won't give me any?" Ada asked.
"I'll give you some when they're ready. I'll help you take cuttings after the shoots harden and the leaves fall, and we can keep them cool and damp until the ground is right. But I don't want you to spend this month watering sticks that are going to dry out."
Ada studied her. "That's not the answer I expected."
"I know. A month ago it isn't the answer I would have given."
Ada looked down at Evelyn's handwriting and then smiled a sad little smile. "Your grandmother used to make me wait, too. Once I asked for rose cuttings in the middle of August and she told me impatience wasn't a growing method. I got angry with her for a week."
"Did the roses grow?"
"The ones I took in the right season did. The ones I stole off her bushes in August did not."
Both women laughed, and Clara realized she had not laughed freely in that kitchen for weeks. She promised to help Ada stabilize the worst bank erosion with what was already available, without removing living plants or obstructing the creek. Ada promised to return when the dormant cuttings were ready. The arrangement was made without contracts or grand speeches. It was the first time another person had come to Clara because she had learned something useful about the land, and it left her shaken in a way mockery never quite had.
The request was followed by others. The Henderson family south of the bridge asked whether willows might help an eroding pasture bank. The Larsons wanted to know what Clara had planted and whether it would survive a normal winter. Joe Kowalski drove up on a Saturday with a folded map of his property and asked whether a line of trees might slow the next flood enough to spare his fencing. Clara began keeping separate pages for each neighbor's questions, noting which problems were similar to hers and which were not.
She often answered, "I don't know." At first the phrase felt like evidence that she was still a girl pretending to be an expert. Then she heard herself explain why a dry hilltop was not the same as a wet creek margin, why a mature willow could be useful beside a ditch but troublesome near a foundation, and why none of them should sacrifice what little water they had to a poor planting experiment during the worst part of a drought. Her uncertainty became a way to protect them from the mistakes she had already made.