Alara Alara The Place

Set in the same universe as "The Cold At The Heart Of The Light" but features a different character.

The executor nodded. “It looks like they didn’t do anything to take care of the yard for the past 10 years. When Walter died, the paramedics had to borrow a weed clipper from the wife to get the walkway wide enough that they could get the stretcher through.”

“My God,” Max said. “Is – was there any chance they could have saved his life otherwise?”

“Oh, no, I’m sure there wasn’t,” the executor said. “He was pronounced DOA. But Helen wants to sell the place and move to an assisted living community. Apparently Walter’d been telling her for ten years that he was having things taken care of – either he was doing the chores, or he was having a landscaper come by, or something – and with her being mostly bed-ridden, she took his word for it.”

“That poor woman. She really hasn’t left her house in ten years?”

“Aside from going outside to bring in grocery and package delivery, neither did Walter. We’ve found a few paths he made through the underbrush to get to the gate where they’d leave the packages, but they weren’t big enough to bring the stretcher through.” The executor shook his head. “The best we can figure, either he was a hoarder of garden vegetation, or he had the worst cast of procrastination anyone’s ever seen.” He gave the suburban jungle one last eyeing-over before turning to Max. “What can you do with this?”

“A lot,” Max said, “but too much of that growth is woody for me to just make it all disappear. When green-stem plants die, like flowers and tomatoes, they just collapse to the ground, but woody plants like trees and shrubs and some kinds of vine will still be there when they die… they won’t continue to grow, their roots will shrink and they’ll dry out and be easier to dig out or cut down, but it’s still going to take some work to remove them.” He pulled at a woody vine that had completely swallowed the white picket fence… at least he thought it was probably a white picket fence from the tiny bits of picket that showed through the vines.