Outside, Trent pulled a heavy leather jump rope out of his bag and cracked it hard against the dirt three feet from our boundary marker.

The thick leather left a four-inch groove in the damp soil beside the fence post.

I stepped out onto the patio and went down the two stone steps.

Through the low branches of the boxwood hedge I saw Trent standing right over the purple lilac roots we’d planted three mornings earlier.

He lifted his heavy leather work boot and kicked the first thin cedar support stake sideways.

The pine stake snapped in two with a dry crack, and the young purple-green stem fell flat into the dark garden dirt.