No Gardener

Flash Fiction

No Gardener

Weeding. Not my favorite. It’s not that I find it hard, or too messy or anything like that. Truth be told, I am not a “gardener.” I love looking at them, and I do like digging in the dirt. I do not like planting. And, because I never “plant” gardens, I don’t really know which plants are flowers and which plants are weeds. Well, I until they “grow up” and show me.

Apparently real gardeners like to keep things cleared up earlier. I get it. I just don’t have enough experience memorizing which tiny plants are going to grow up to be weeds. To me, all small, growing things just look like small growing things!

My daughter-in-law can look at the shape of some little squiggly plant that’s popped up in the dirt, and actually tell what it’s going to be when it grows up. And she’ll be right! She’s the gardener here.

However, early spring requires some maintenance. We do have perennials in our (her) gardens. So, as I play in the dirt, raking and edging I keep my eyes open for some of the plants I’m supposed to let grow. I’m learning! But today I found a tiny orange one. We live in New England; it’s certainly not an orange plant.

I left it, but watched it closely, for days! It was really cute too. Tiny, little stem, tiny orange leaves just starting to grow. I cleared around it, and put down mulch. It was my new baby!

Then one afternoon, my six-year-old granddaughter was out with me. When she went over to that side, I rushed over to tell her not to touch my plant. Too late!

“Look Grammie!” she said, excitedly! I found the plastic plant that goes with my doll house!

So… still no gardener-me…