This chapter is a little look into Brittany's life. Hope you enjoy. And with any luck I will have the next chapter up in a couple days.

Chapter 2

"Good morning." I say as brightly as I can at seven o'clock in the morning.

"Mornin'." My boss parrots automatically. It's like this every morning. The same thing, the same routine. We show up at seven and says good morning to each other and get about our business.

"So, what are we doing today?" I ask. It's early but I'm ready to get started. I always say, 'you can't get anything done if you don't get up early'.

"Well, first, you are gonna go to Breezy Acres and do clean up and weeding and dead heading. Anything that needs attention, attend to it. Maintenance stuff, you know." The short, curly-haired, blonde tells me.

"Okay." I nod. Sounds easy enough. Well, it's easy for me.

"We have to get the place ready before the Memorial Day Weekend. The family is coming up to spend the weekend there. They're coming on Friday, so it has to be done before then." She explains further.

"Okay. So, there's nobody there now?" I ask. I've been surprised in the past when I've thought nobody was home and then out of nowhere someone comes up behind me and scares the shit out of me. It's nice to know if there is a possibility of someone sneaking up on me. That way I can try and keep an eye out.

"Actually, he said his daughter is there but she probably won't come outside. And you don't have to go to the door."

"Okay. And then what? I'm sure that won't take all day. What's Eric doing today? He still working on that wall?"

"Yeah. I talked to him last night, he thinks he should be done with that wall today and then he can move on to the next project. But, you can just come back here and we can do some work out at my land." My boss tells me and I nod along with the information. She has some property that we plant vegetables and trees and other things at. It's about ten minutes from here down by the river.

"Alright." I turn and go to get everything that I need for my first job of the day.

I grab everything I might need and throw it all on the truck. I double check to make sure that I have everything before I leave. "See ya later." I yell across the parking lot and then hop in my truck. I hear a muffled 'yep see ya later Brittany' from my boss.

I start driving- it's about a twenty minutes drive away- and thinking about the tasks that lie ahead of me. All fairly easy. A light day, in my opinion. Well, at least the morning will be. I'm not exactly sure what my boss has in store for me when I return to the nursery. Part of me doesn't want to know.

I turn the radio up to drown out the thoughts in my head. Not that they are bad or unpleasant thoughts or anything like that but I just love driving around with the radio on. For me driving is relaxing and calming. And add some great tuneage to that, all the better.

I know my boss thinks it's weird, but I like listening to the classical rock station. I know all the songs even if they were from when I was a baby or before I was born. I told her I like them so much because it's what my parents listened to and played in the car when I was little. It's the first music I was every introduced to. She just laughed and said that makes sense.

The drive goes fast and soon I am descending a hill and rounding the corner and I arrive at the house.

I get out of the truck and do a quick walk around the yard assessing what needs to be done. Weeds need to be pulled, a couple boxwoods need to be pruned, there are some tulips and daffodils that are done flowering and need to be cut off. It's a simple job but it will take me at least two hours maybe three.

It's a beautiful day. No, check that, it's a perfect day, in my opinion. The sun is shining, there isn't a cloud in the sky, there's a light breeze, and the high temperature today is expected to be in the low seventies. Perfect. I smile and get to work.

Oh, and there's a great view of the water from the backyard of the house.

Two hours and forty five minutes later I finish my job. I put my five gallon pail and pruner back in the truck. Everything seemed to go pretty well except for one thing. And that's what has me going to the front door. I found a little problem and want to see if I can alert someone to that problem. Otherwise I have to go back to my boss and tell her and then she has to contact the homeowner and discuss it with them. Sometimes it's just easier to get it taken care of right away.

I get to the front door and ring the door bell and wait. My boss said the homeowner's daughter was staying here but that doesn't mean that she's home right now. I look around as I wait. There is a car in the driveway but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

There is a robin in a tree in the front yard singing a tune and on the road an older couple with a dog are walking by. I wave at them and smile. They wave back. I hear the front door open as I am waving.

"Hi, I just wanted to let you know-" I start but stop when I finally swivel around to get a glimpse of the person at the door. "Holy crap." I blurt with wide surprised eyes. It takes a few seconds for me to process everything but when I do my eyes return to their normal size and a silly smile takes over my face. "So, we meet again." I says to an equally surprised, if not more, Santana.

When I said I hoped to see her around again I wasn't sure that was actually a possibility or that it would happen so soon. It's only been two days since we met at the diner.

Santana is standing there with wide, shocked eyes just staring at me. Plus, she looks like she just got up. Her hair is all disheveled and she doesn't have any make-up on, not that she had a lot on the other day but I can still tell the difference. She is wearing a sweatshirt and teeny, tiny shorts. I can't help my eyes as they rake down the girl's body appreciating her tan, tan legs. My eyes return to hers and I think she blinks for the first time.

Santana crosses her arms over her chest attempting to cover herself up. Did she catch me looking at her body? Did I make her uncomfortable? Don't get me wrong the girl- woman- has a great body. Well, what I've seen of it. She definitely has great legs but I don't want to make her uncomfortable or have her think I've perving on her, although, I sort of am.

"I'm sorry if I woke you up-" I look down at my watch and see that it is after ten-thirty. That's kinda late to be sleeping. But, I shouldn't judge, I don't know her. Maybe she was up half the night or see had to work a late shift or something like that. "-but there-" I start to explain why I'm at her door but she cuts me off.

"What are you doing here?" She asks. Her voice sounds scratchy and dry from lack of use.

"Well, as I was just about to say, I found a little problem over there." I point behind myself to one of the landscaped flower beds in the front yard. "There are a bunch of box elder bugs on the daylilies. I wanted to let someone know about it before I left. I didn't know if anyone would be home or not. But, I wanted you to know so you can take care of it. You or somebody. Can you pass the message on to the homeowner?"

"You mean my dad?" She asks with confusion.

"If he's the one that owns the property. Then yes." I nod.

"And what's the problem?" She asks. I just told her what the problem is but I know a lot of people don't understand what I'm saying when I'm talking in my landscape language. I'll have to approach this a different way.

"Would you like me to show you?" She nods. "Okay." I turn and start walking over to where the little bugs are. I stop and look over my shoulder to see her coming up behind me in her bare feet. I kneel down on the ground and pull the leaves back revealing a grouping of bugs. "This is the problem. These little guys are box elder bugs. And they have taken over this area." I put my hand out and touch the soil, some of the bugs crawl up onto it. I hold them up towards Santana for her to get a better look.

"Eeehhh." She grimaces and takes a step back.

I smile at her reaction. Cute. "They are harmless, well, unless you are a box elder or maple or ash tree. But, if you don't want them around I suggest you guys get a trap and that should take care of most of them. They just eat box elder seed pods and sometimes leaves. They aren't going to damage these dayliles. I'm not sure why they are swarmed around them actually. They just make the bed look kinda messy." I look up to Santana from where I was watching a bug crawl up the inside of my arm.

"Right." Santana says with a tight smile.

"You can get a trap or just leave them be. It's up to you but I wanted to let you know."

"Well, thanks. I guess." She says and tilts her head to the side. "So, what are you, like, some bug experts or-?"

I chuckle and shake my head.

"Then why are you in my yard?" Is her next question.

"I am a landscaper- among other things. And I am in charge of the maintenance of the planting beds in your yard." I say with a proud smile. And I am. I'm proud of the work that I do.

"Oh." She mumbles. I stand up and flick the three bugs that are still crawling around on my arm off. I turn to her so that we are face to face.

"Today I came by to make sure everything looked great. My boss said that your family is coming for the Memorial Day weekend. I pulled any weeds that there were and I pruned back the boxwoods, did some other dead heading and clean up stuff too."

"Okay." She says slowly, looking around the yard as if to see what I had done. Honestly, a lot of people don't even know when I come to there house and neaten things up. A lot of people are pretty clueless, but hey, they want us to take care of their plantings and that's what we do. "Oh, over there. You made those bushes smaller and rounder."

"Shrubs. Boxwoods. Yes." I confirm for her. Silently impressed that she actually noticed.

"That's so cool. How'd you do that? They look perfectly round, kinda like gumdrops." She turns back to look at me with a big impressed smile, waiting for my answer.

I smile. This is one of the best parts of my job- making people smile just because of improving there yard and making it look good. "I just take my pruner and cut back the older growth from the middle, and thinned them out a little, and then rounded them off."

"They look great." She sounds in awe.

"Thanks. If you don't have any other questions I should get going. Work to do, ya know." I shrug as if it's nothing.

"Are you going to make someone else's yard look really good too?"

"No." I shake my head lightly. "I'm not actually sure what I will be doing the rest of the day but I know it's not gonna be yard maintenance stuff. Probably prepping the boss's garden for planting."

"Oh. Well-" A phone starts ringing. It's not my phone so it must be Santana's. The noise is coming from the front pocket of her sweatshirt. She smiles apologetically at me and pulls her phone out of her pocket and answers it. I get the hint and grab my shovel and leaf rake that were still laying on the lawn and put them in the bed of the truck.

Santana is back at the front door when I get back to my truck after making one final lap around the yard to make sure I didn't forget anything. I have forgotten my shovel on a couple of occasions at jobs and didn't realize it until the next day. It's hard to use a shovel when you don't have it.

I hop in the truck and start the engine and put the vehicle in reverse so I can back out of the driveway. I look one last time at the house and Santana is standing there in the doorway. The phone still to her ear. I wave and smile. She waves back and I turn in my seat to look behind me and back out the driveway.

I get back to the landscape nursery and pull into the front driveway. Jerry is standing over one of the many water hoses that we have just laying around. He's filling up jugs of water to take out into the field to water trees that were just planted recently.

When I say my boss that's my boss Mary. The short, curled-haired, blonde but I guess Jerry is also my boss. Mary is in charge of the jobs that our company does and Jerry runs the nursery and takes care of all of the plants. Either one or both of them have work for me to do. Mostly I am out on 'the road' working on jobs. But, our home base is at the nursery and I do work there too. Mary is the one who signs my paychecks though so I think of her as my main boss.

I park and get out of the truck. "Hey, Jerry." I say as I walk over to him. He wasn't here this morning when I first should up to work and he wasn't back from wherever he was before I left.

"Hi." He says without looking up from the jug that he is filling with water. "How was the job?"

"Good. It was mostly weeding and pruning." I shrug. I don't need to explain it to him anymore than that. He knows what I mean when I say weeding and pruning.

"Well, we've actually been working here." He says and finally looks up at me with a sly little grin on his face.

I know am about to hear it. "Oh yeah?"

"Yeah." He nods and returns to filling jugs. "We dug a trench for the new water line."

I nod in understanding. I know all about that project. Jerry has been putting it off for weeks. He kept saying he was waiting for me to dig the trench. And I would've done it, but I've been too busy. It's wasn't going to be an easy job. The trench needed to be dug six inches down and go all the way across the length of the back driveway through compacted gravel.

I lean against the building with my shoulder. "Wow." I can't help but comment. "That must have been fun." I say sarcastically.

"Tons." He grumbles. "Wish you were here."

"I bet." I grin and he looks at me and rolls his eyes. "So, where's Mary?"

Jerry shuts off the water and caps the last jug of water. "She's out at her land putting the netting on the blueberry enclosure. She should be back at lunch time."

"So, she skipped out on the trench then?"

He chuckles. "Yeah, Sara and I worked on it- by ourselves."

Sara is Jerry's assistant, so to speak. She works at the nursery with him. She waters the plants and does whatever else that needs to be done.

"You can load these onto my truck. Sara is watering. You and I can take these out to the field and water the new trees."

"Okay." Looks like I will be working with Jerry until lunch. Which is fine by me. He's a fun guy to be around most of the time. He's old but I like him. We have a strange little relationship where it seems that we tease, and kid, and make fun or each other whenever we find the opportunity.