Flash Prompt Sept 13, 2010

[grainnerhuad]

The Garden.

[neonorth]

It’s been a long time since I’ve been here, in the garden. It’s not even a thirty second walk out the back door but I haven’t had the time. It’s one of life’s cruellest catch-22; you soldier forth to make a life for yourself then when you stop for the briefest of moments, you realize life has passed you by. Gardening is not just a hobby; it’s a metaphor about life, when you think about it. You have to prepare a garden, plan what you want, plant then tend to it by weeding it, watering and protecting it so that what you want in the end comes out with the richest of flavours and colour. There was a time that the shovel’s metal would be gingerly devoured by the dirt, turning over as smooth as mixing flour and sugar to make some buns to go with the greens that you just pulled out for supper. The garden made the yard fragrant with herbal aromas, I remember just sitting back on my knees and breathing in that air after weeding with closed eyes and a big smile on my face.

Just look at my garden now, the dirt is hard, cracked, with only the heartiest of weeds being able to withstand the uncare that it had been left so. I had asked them to take care of the garden when I went away, they said they would, but I guess like me it got lost in the day to day going-ons. Ten years is a long time to hope for someone to do anything, I suppose. Even my Jeffery couldn’t keep his promises for ten years.

I remember in my younger days how much the neighbours were jealous of how well my garden looked; year after year I would win those “best of” prizes for whatever I planted in that soil. People would always ask me how I managed such a bounty; I would always smile and tell them that it was all in the fertilizer. That’s not a lie, that the trick to a good garden is the fertilizer, the choice you make for those seeds to rest in sets the stage for how well they will thrive when they poke themselves out of the dirt to reach for the sun. People would ask what kind of fertilizer I used, but I would never say, I would just wink and tell them it was my own personal recipe.

There’s a lot of hard work that goes into putting the fertilizer in too, you just can’t put it on top – you lose a lot of the nutrients that the plants need. It’s the same with when you dig up the garden and put the fertilizer in – if you put it too deep, it does nothing for the plants. Then you have to think about when you put the fertilizer in; if you put it in during the fall, it may lose all the nutrients before the spring depending on the kind of winter you have. If you put the fertilizer in a few weeks past the time the ground is too unfrozen, then the nutrients are released too late. I discovered that if you place the fertilizer in when the first couple of inches are soft but the next couple of feet of ground is still frozen, it gives the fertilizer a chance to enrich the top soil a couple of weeks before planting. The condition of the fertilizer is important to; the fresher the better, the warmth for fresh fertilizer can draw those creatures that make the dirt that richer for the planting.

The truth is that I didn’t expect my garden to blossom so, goodness no! At first I didn’t have even a hope that anything would grow, considering the fertilizer I used. I think it was a gift from God that made the garden grow and thrive as it did. It was His way of rewarding me for passing the cruellest tests of my faith that he had arranged for me; the betrayal of my sweet Jeffery.

I came across the winning recipe for my fertilizer quite by accident; I remember that night as clear as a bell, that end of March night that I came home and found Jeffery acting like he was a woman, down on all fours, while that filthy queer was being the man. They stopped when they saw me standing there in the doorway, Jeffery getting up and saying sorry over and over again, but I knew he didn’t mean it – he had a smirk on his face that matched the one that filthy queer had on as he didn’t even have the decency to cover himself or the pride he had in his befoulment of my Jeffery with his hard standing still swaggering.

I think Jeffery thought that I would just sit down and cry; following me into the kitchen while he was trying to get some pants on with his empty sorrys. My Jeffery, my man, huffing and moaning like that, it was disgusting to see; how could he do that to me? He acting like that, well that was like I had been sleeping with another woman – that queer had not only tainted my Jeffery, but me. Jeffery didn’t even scream when I pulled out our butcher knife and made him be quiet. The queer screamed and tried to run like a woman when I came for him though; he wasn’t such a big man when I got through with him.

I must have stood therein the bedroom with that filthy creature for most of the night, until the redness had sloughed off the blade of the knife, mad as a wet hen without a inkling of what to do. I went back to the kitchen, trying to remember my Jeffery when he was a man and what he’d do with this type of garbage. I looked out the window and as if God was showing me the way, the moonlight sparkled on the frost dirt crests of the garden.

When work phoned for Jeffery, I told him that he had run off with another woman. The receptionist asked if I was sure it was another woman quite politely. Even when his sisters and brothers rang up and I told them the same thing, there weren’t any questions afterward other than was I sure it was another woman. I guess I had been made the fool for a lot longer than I could have imagined.

I remember how good the potatoes from the garden had tasted that year, firm and large, where the queer had been put. The sweet peas that had fed on Jeffery didn’t fare so well, I suppose even in death Jeffery was a disappointment. It seems funny that how terrible those queers are in life, in death they have can add such a richness to one’s goals in gardening.

There were some turns in the road, of course – there always is when you’re trying something new, but over the next three years I learned so much. Getting the fertilizer wasn’t hard. I suppose it was the only good thing that Jeffery really left me, his little black book that I had found hidden deep in his underwear drawer, with the names and numbers of queers that he knew and an address to the queer bar. I found that just two will do a garden nicely; just like they spread their foulness to my Jeffery, they seem to spread well out in a garden as they are doing the only job they’re good for.

It is crucial to remove all the apparel – roots cannot easily puncture the material and get into the meat of the fertilizer. A sledge hammer is handy to break the rib cage; nothing spoils the thoughts of a good potato salad than having potatoes ripped up by bone if they germinate in the chest cavity. The fresher you get the fertilizer in the ground, like when their still seeping their dirty lives away, the better the seeds seem to take. Maybe it’s because of the way the fertilizer warms the ground for a couple of hours that makes all the difference, I can’t be sure about that. I made the mistake of trying to fertilize the garden when it was too fresh and it just plain old got up and ran away.

I fibbed; my Jeffery did leave me another gift: a concrete mixer. That nasty prosecutor called my gardening murder at first, but after they didn’t find the used up fertilizer in my garden, they called it attempted manslaughter. None of those gentlemen had been gardeners, or they would have known that you take out all the rocks and hard stuff from the soil so it doesn’t harm the roots the next year. I thought is was justice that when those queers use had been used up, that I could show them that they were still beneath me as I walked on the sidewalk path to the garden. Still, they took me away from my home.

How I’ve missed gardening so.

[grainnerhuad]

LOVE this! Well done and just in time for harvest! Haha! I'd like to use this in our fiction if it's alright.

I used this for my ongoing Little Red story. But was afraid it wouldn't make sense posted here alone. I think I'll put it up anyway.

Thanks Tony.

[grainnerhuad]

Rowan in the Garden

Rowan gazed at the garden with a sigh. It was past time to put it to bed for the year. Usually she did not leave it so late and a part of her felt guilty. But it was a small part. The rest of her felt not much at all.
She had not been sleeping well. It wasn’t the falling asleep. It was, rather the staying asleep. Since that day in the woods, she could not get her mind off of it. She knew she was not supposed to be there. She knew also that the Woodsmen knew someone had been in there. She had seen their watch fires by night.
It was probably these fires that contributed to her loss of sleep. Everyone was disconcerted by them. The Woodsmen had gone for such a long time without night watches. People were whispering, casting about for who may have gone in the woods. Invariably their eyes fell on her, after all the last time the fires had burned they recalled, her mother carried here. After her second year the fires stopped.
She knew her mother felt some concern as well, although she wouldn’t talk about it. Her mother kept a sharp eye on her though. Nobody had yet spoken out against her, but neither was she allowed any freedoms. No more trips to market, no more night walks along the meadow. And absolutely no going about without her red cloak. In fact, by decree all maidens had to now don Red Pinafores. These had to be pulled out of attics and chests as nobody had worn them in a generation. There was a sense of urgency about this breach.
And she had been the one to cause it.
Sighing and wiping her forehead she pulled on her gloves picked up her basket and headed to the garden. She felt bad about here contrary spirit. All this was her fault and the least she could do was to gather the last pumpkins and squash and begin the cut up of the vines.
As she worked the prickly vines scratching the uncovered bits of her arms and legs she felt her mind turn towards the woods, it was her favorite meditation. She imagined the deep loam of the deep woods with the smell of life and death in it at the same time. The only thing she ever smelt here was wood smoke and animal pens. And people. It was a sharp contrast to the fresh clean smell of the forest. It was cushioned and moist and did not hurt her feet to stand in as this ground did. It moved. She could not say how, but it was different from this ground. It seemed in slight perpetual motion, where the garden patch, the village the roads seemed to wait for human hands to move them.
She remembered the sounds. Insects chirping and birds singing. Little squirrels yelling at her from the trees as she passed. And then she turned her mind as she always did to the queer little fox. That red fox seemed to recognize her; she had never felt anything like it.
Standing up to stretch she walked over to the fence to fetch some water from her bucket. The water was warm and tasted of the metal dipper, which served only to remind her of the cool fresh running creek. It was when she looked up that she saw the owl regarding her from the fence post.
“Whatever is an owl doing out?” she said out loud to herself.
The owl gazed at her and opened its beak as if to say something. So strange she thought. And that’s when she noticed its eyes; they were blue, not at all an owl color. The owl seemed to regard her for a moment, then raised his wings at once and flew off.
She watched as it swept over head and turned heading back over her in the other direction. Towards the woods.
She felt a shudder go through her. Almost like a need. Strangely, a need to follow the owl. She took a few halting steps away from the garden when she heard her sister calling to her.
“Rowan! “
She turned and saw her curly headed sister rushing down the path towards the house.
“Edan where have you come from?”
“Mam said I could come and be with you. She has to stay to the council.” Edan answered a big gap toothed grin filling up most of her face.
“The council is it?” Rowan was deeply troubled by this; the council is set to meet at the moon, three weeks away. She wondered what had caused them to convene so early. It was unlikely to be good news.

[neonorth]

Glad you liked it, I was watching a documentary on a 79 year old cougar who only dates men younger than 40. The first five minutes all she talked about was quilting, how she likes to garden then suddenly she's talking about the reason why she dates men no older than 40 was that she "likes the feeling of being filled up not being dribbled in". I thought it was a cool seperation of the stereotypical grandma type she certainly looked as the part of, then going to places where I now really have the urge to go to New York.

You can certainly use it if you wish. By the by, I think that yours makes one to read more...

[grainnerhuad]

Thanks, I am building. Rowan's story is growing but more than that the supporting charactors are speaking out.