The rest of the day meandered along. Richard finished sweeping, and Evelyn brought some of her dishes down from her apartment above the shop for him to practice cleaning. She asked John to man the counter while she took Richard over to the well and taught him how to draw water. 

She taught him how to rinse with the well water. He wasn’t perfect, but he at least had the basics. The final step was to boil the well water and dunk the dishes, but she wouldn’t be boiling water till she made her dinner, so she explained the step to him, and sent him on his way with the bouquet for his wife. Hopefully they would hear back from him with good results the next day. 

Her thoughts drifted off to the water she’d brought in as she hauled it up to her apartment for use later in the day. 

When she first found herself in this world, the realization that everyone was using well water shocked her, but she’d quickly learned that people boiled the water for a lot of their needs. Right after that she became sick and at first she thought it might be the water. She survived but then continued being off and on sick for a decent portion of her first year until her body built up the immunity it needed in this world. 

She’d realized her sickness probably wasn’t the well water and was just her body getting used to the diseases in this world. People seemed very good about boiling the water for drinking, sanitizing dishes, or washing off food. The only thing water was used for without boiling was bathing, cleaning the house and laundry, and watering plants. Though she preferred to use the rainwater collection system for the plants if possible. It was easier than hauling buckets of water from the well everyday. 

She stretched out her muscles as she walked down the stairs, and saw John talking with an older gray haired man she’d seen around town, but she didn’t know him too well. The moment John saw her he waved her over. “This man is another who would like to pre-order flowers to pick up during the flower festival.”

Evelyn put on her best customer service smile and walked over. “Which flowers are you looking to purchase?”

As she walked behind the counter John sat down on the stool. 

The man looked perplexed. “I’m not really sure. I want to get matching corsages for my grandchildren. I think small blue flowers would look pretty?” His voice wavered in uncertainty.

Evelyn thought about it for a moment. A corsage for cute young children. “What if we did a bigger flower like a blue Gladiolus surrounded by some smaller wild flowers like Germander Speedwell flowers.” 

The man looked like she’d grown wings or something. “Come with me, I’ll show you the flowers I am thinking of.” 

She looked over at John and he nodded. He would continue watching the counter. It really was useful having someone to help out around the business. 

She took the old man to the greenhouse and showed him the flowers she was thinking of. She loved using small native wildflowers as filler on arrangements. They grew easily, produced lots of flowers, and the cute little blossoms helped really fill out the arrangement.

They went back inside, and Evelyn wrote up the contract with a timeslot around mid morning, almost the afternoon for pickup.

“I would love to see your grandchildren. I’m certain they will look adorable with the corsages,” Evelyn told him in parting. 

He smiled. “Since it’s later pickup time you’ll get to meet them. All four of them are quite adorable,” he gave a small bow. “Well I must be off. Thank you for your help today Miss Evelyn.”

“You’re Welcome. See you in three days!” Evelyn called out as the man left.

She turned toward John who was massaging his messed up right leg. He looked over at her. “I think we’ll have a storm tonight. We should make sure there are enough barrels connected to the system to collect all the rain water. It’s been really useful not having to go to a well.”

She nodded. “I can go check on that now,” she volunteered so that John wouldn’t feel like he needed to stand up. She knew he would do it if she didn’t get it right then, and she wanted to let him rest a little longer. He never said anything about the pain, and he was always getting so many things around the shop done that when he went to take a break, she wanted to make sure he actually got a break. She spent most of her day behind the shop counter these days anyway. 

She made her way to the back and looked in the barrels. She had about half of the current barrel filled, but from the heavy rain clouds she could see against the sun that was getting ready to set, she should probably move the downspout to a fresh barrel. She put on of the empty barrels near the half full one and moved the wooden half cylinder ramp she used to direct water from the iron pipe to the barrel she wanted filled. It wasn’t a perfect system, but it worked. 

She added another barrel on the other side of the half full one just in case the rain lasted a while and she needed to run out and move the spout during the rain.