Once in a Lifetime [antikvár]

Prologue Star Bluestone had talked to bees all her life. She talked to her flowers too, murmuring to the rare yellow poppies she'd nurtured from seeds gathered in the old Italianate garden thirty miles away across the Wickiow hills. She and the young Kiwi gardener there had such great chats, he walking her through the orchard and reaching up to cradle a baby apple bud the way another man might touch a woman. He understood that people who loved the soil talked to their plants and to the bees whose careful industry made their flowers bloom. Even though he was only thirty to Star's sixty years, he didn't think she was an eccentric old lady. Rather, he was impressed by Star's encyclopaedic knowledge of plant life. His earnest, handsome face became animated when they talked. When she watched this kind boy, Star always remembered fondly that good gardeners make good lovers. Nobody capable of the tenderness required to separate delicate fronds of fern for replanting would ever be heavy-handed with another person's body. It had been a few years since Star had lain in a man's