The Gardener

Yesterday in the afternoon I was helping my mom to take care for our little garden. Well, I was mostly the one who did the dirty work and mom spent most of the time chatting with our neighbor who has just returned from holiday trip. They were both cleaning the beds by the stairs so I had to take care of the front part of our garden myself.

At first I was just playing games with Ája. That was at the time when mom was still working on the flowerbeds under our large poison oak. From time to time she had some words with our neighbor but most of the time she was working. But than she straightened her back out and started to talk to that neighbor and it was clear that there would not be any more work.

Therefore I left Ája sunbathing on the lawn. She was chewing on her favorite wooden stick and didn’t care I left her alone. I went to check on one of the flower beds, which is placed in a long sandstone manger. There are some flowers inside and also small decorative stones. Next to the manger mom put another flowerpot with only some ground in it. I was surprised because in that pot there was nothing growing. Just something like poppy seeds was on the surface. Why would my mom put poppy seeds in a pot? Strange, isn’t it? So I started to place the ground from the pot to the manger. Flowers always need some more ground, right? I just gave them some nutrition.

Mom forgot to buy me my own gardening tools so I had to take the ground by my own hands. You have to sacrifice yourself for the good. I gave some ground to the nearest flower than I took some ground back so the flower would not have too much. I was just going to move with the pot to the next flower when mom came. Her hands full of ground too. I thing the neighbor must have gone home so mom started working again.

Mommy was not looking at me too happily. Instead of thanking me for the help she was actually quite angry. She took the added ground from the poor flower and gave it back to the pot. Than she washed her hands in a bucket with rain water (although she never let me put my hands into it) and wiped them on the working trousers she was wearing. Than she grabbed me, knocked off the dirt from my hands and took me home. I was humiliated – my clothes was taken off, I was washed a little and than left to my own fate.

For some times I could hear mom from outside as she angrily cleaned all gardening tools. She was saying thing about basil that it does not look the best among the decorative garden nettles etc. I didn’t understand a word. Than I went to have a bath. As I already said it was quite clear from the beginning – the moment mom started chatting with the neighbor – that she won’t do much work that day. And of course I was right. She never got back to gardening that afternoon.