“You do enjoy making the earth’s growing things into your object lessons, don’t you?” said McCallum, joining in his laughter.

“If you only knew!” added Marion. “Positively everything in the mind of this husband of mine comes back to roots, soil, plants, and God’s creation! He loves to find the lessons of nature for everything else in life!”

The baron roared with good-natured laughter to hear his wife talk about him so.

“I confess to every word!” he said. “She’s absolutely right, I do love it.”

“I have the distinct feeling you’re not talking about plants, though, Baron,” said Thaddeus.

“What are children but tender, growing live things?” asked Dortmann in reply. “I happen to be a strong believer in giving all things that grow a strong and healthy beginning in the protected environment of the greenhouse. Figuratively speaking, of course.”

“Please, explain what you mean more specifically,” said Thaddeus.

“Let me give you an example,” replied the baron. “When I travel to Berlin to find a certain new specimen for my garden here, or to purchase seedlings, or when I visit one of my many horticulturally enthusiastic friends around Neidersdorf to obtain a cutting or start of some plant I want to try, I go to extreme lengths to give that plant all the help I can to make sure it begins its life in a healthy manner. Whatever strength it will carry with it throughout the remainder of its existence depends on the help I give it in its first year or two. What I must do mostly at first is protect and shelter it from all sorts of effects that would kill it if left to itself—snow, frost, wind, pests, various fungi, rabbits, deer, snails, and so on. I am extremely protective of my young plants, and often I cover them with small shields until they are well under way. I also fertilize and prune as needed. I spare no effort during the critical first two seasons.”

The baron paused, glancing toward the sky in the east.

“Do you see those dark clouds off in the distance, Thaddeus?” he said.

McCallum looked, then nodded.

“From the smell of it, and the feel of the breeze that kicked up about twenty minutes ago, I can tell they are moving this way. There will be rain on the ground under our feet by this time tomorrow. I guarantee it. Possibly a severe rain. And if I had any plants or cuttings I had recently put in the ground, I would this very afternoon take necessary precautions to protect them from getting blown about too much, or the topsoil washed from them.