World Naked Gardening Day: Perfect Rows by Holly Day

Chickens!!! Erm… I mean hello, and thank you, Ally, for allowing me to drop by today. I’m here to talk about my new story, Perfect Rows, which was released yesterday. It’s part of our World Naked Gardening collaboration – World Naked Gardening Day was also yesterday. If you missed it but still want to give it a go, watch out for the nettles 😉

My excitement about chickens is that I have baby chicks, and this spring I’ve had one broody hen who’s been sitting on eggs. I know very little about broody hens other than that they’ll try to kill you if you get too close. We have two rows of nesting boxes, and she of course decided to have her babies on the second floor. Sigh. So we’ve had a couple of fun nightly adventures where we’ve gone out in the pitch dark to move her and her eggs. She’s been gracious about it – not! But after two tries we managed to get her settled in her own space where the nesting boxes are on ground level so no chicks will fall to their death.

In case you didn’t know, I’m slightly obsessed with chickens. This is a rather new thing for me. I’ve only kept hens for about three years, so I’m essentially a newbie. I often pester Ally, who’s an expert on the matter, with questions.

Sometimes when you write a story, you add little things for your own amusement. In Perfect Rows, Grayson wants to have chickens. He’s all about food security and sees the benefits of having chickens. He can feed his food scraps to his hens and get eggs for him and manure for the garden in return.

He has big plans.

Camden has big plans too. He wants a beautiful garden with lots of flowers. He pictures plants growing in perfect lines where nothing is out of place. He wants sweet fragrances and buzzing bees. And he most definitely doesn’t want any chickens. No crowing roosters are gonna interrupt his mornings.

The problem?

Camden and Grayson share the garden. They’re living in two cottage-style houses facing each other that once belonged to Grayson’s grandmother and her sister. Between the houses is an old kitchen garden with large raised beds, a greenhouse, and a barbeque area.

Grayson’s grandmother and her sister didn’t have any problems sharing the space. Grayson and Camden… there are some problems. The chicken issue is just one of them.

I had so much fun writing this one, and in case you didn’t realise, I’m on team Grayson. It’s not that I dislike Camden; it’s just that he’s wrong. Everyone should have chickens LOL

Read an Excerpt

Camden Hensley watched Grayson stalk off and blew out a breath. That was one fine ass; too bad it was attached to an ass. The garden could be lovely, it was lovely, but it could be truly beautiful if Grayson could only find it in himself to be a little more organized. Everything was higgledy-piggledy with Grayson. Everything. The way he dressed, the mess in his car—he mixed black T-shirts with white when he washed, for fuck’s sake. Though, Cam guessed he should be glad he washed at all.
A painter.
Who wanted to paint walls all day? And this obsession with chickens... He shook his head. It had started as soon as Grayson had moved in. He hadn’t been there more than a day or two before he’d approached Cam about wanting to build a chicken coop.
They would not have chickens running around, roosters crowing at dawn—no, thank you.
Cam loved his home, loved the garden, and the peace that came with living outside the city. But everything had been so much better when Frances had been alive. She’d been an adorable little lady and instead of criticizing everything Camden did in the garden, she’d been pleased.
He couldn’t believe Grayson was her grandson. They were nothing alike—not in appearance, not in manner, and Frances had never snarled at him. She baked cookies and used them as bribes to get him to sit with her in the garden and chat for a bit. She was easygoing, satisfied with life, and it was a welcome break from the ugliness of the world.
The garden had been his oasis until Grayson had moved in. Loud, demanding Grayson. He towered over Camden as if he believed his size would intimidate him. It did, but he’d never admit it.
Cam remembered Grayson from school, though he doubted Grayson remembered him. He’d been the rail-thin kid in the corner with unwashed clothes whose mother forgot to pack lunch on field day. She forgot to serve dinner too, but it wasn’t as obvious as the lack of lunch on field day.
Grayson had been wild. Not mean, but loud, though Camden had been terrified of him. He’d spent more time roaming the corridors than he had attending lessons, and then one day he’d been gone. Cam didn’t know what had happened, but someone had said he was working at his uncle’s painting firm, and since he was a painter now, Camden assumed the rumor had been true. He’d been fifteen then, so Grayson had been sixteen.
Camden looked at the house Grayson had stormed off to. Twenty-one years of painting walls, no wonder he was growling all the time. Cam would’ve died of boredom. Perhaps he should give in on the chickens simply to give Grayson something new in his life—no. No chickens. No noise. No mess. If Grayson wanted more excitement in his life, he could go back to school and get himself a better job.
He glanced at the house again. Had Grayson put on clothes?

JMS Books :: Amazon :: books2read.com/PerfectRows