30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 2, The Grower

There was once a very cruel woman. She was unkind to her neighbors, nasty to her children, and generally difficult. She was very thin with a long, sharp face, hair pulled back in thin strings, and she wore a somewhat dirty apron at all times. She had no love; her husband, whom she had married from the necessity of their being no more room at her parents' house (8 children and another on the way) had died in his sleep, suddenly, when their children were still children. She always thought it unfair he had died in his sleep, peacefully, when she was left with a violent and brutal world. A good accident would have been so much more satisfying.

As it was, and as aforementioned, she had no love. But she did lavish care and gentleness upon one thing - in fact, a set of things. She had a garden of sorts, which she tended with care. Truly, it was just two strict lines of flower beds, and within them she planted very neatly the seeds. But she cared for it nonetheless. The two raised rows were always fresh and without weeds. She spent hours of her days in the garden, weeding and laboring and watering. However, nothing ever grew. She worked and worked and worked. She never gave up. In fact, it was in her garden that her daughter found her, slumped over a trowel, quite dead. By that time, her hair was an iron gray, and her gaunt figure yet gaunter in a worn-out brown sack dress. Her daughter laid her to rest beside her husband, the family cried as was customary, and then carried on.

The daughter was nothing like her mother. She was playful and carefree. She had escaped the stern, angry words of her mother and the lashing tongue to play in the woods and the fields. She had taken to her heels instead of bandying arguments about the little stone cottage. And it had served her well. Her heart was open, and her mind was clear (if a little anti-social from all that woods-wandering). Her brother, a tall, severe man, had moved to the city and appeared in a fine dark suit to the funeral, curtly paid his respects, and promptly removed himself again.

Charlotte, for her name was Charlotte, returned from her job and her shared room with other singles in the Upper Middleton, and went back to Little Middleton, and her mother's house, to get it ready for selling. She didn't really know what needed to be done, but thought that she should probably do it, nevertheless. She laughed at the cat, cranky and arthritic, who nevertheless greeted her with purrs, and she laughed when he brought her a fieldmouse. She laughed at the birds who sang in the trees, and she began to see what she must do to settle the house.

The house was quite in order. Her mother had been perhaps a mean woman, but an incredibly clean one. All the linens were laundered and mended, all the dishes washed and put away, there was a thin layer of dust about the place, but other than that, there was nothing needed doing. Charlotte sighed. She really wished there was just one thing she could do for the memory of her, the woman who bore her. She glanced out in the fields. And there she saw the garden. It had become overgrown and rather sad-looking in the three weeks it had taken her to settle her life and come to Little Middleton, and to the cottage. The rows of dark earth were graying in the sun, weeds had taken hold in the prime soil, and there were blackberry vines creeping in already. She sighed. Her mother had never found any luck in the garden - but... but... it was something Charlotte could do. She took her mother's garden basket, austere and worn, and carried it with her to the garden.

She weeded and watered and pruned, and soon it looked lovely. Absolutely lovely, clean and neat just as her mother had had it her life. And Charlotte smiled a sad smile, and rose up off her knees, stiff from sitting, and went in to dinner.

It was a few days later that Charlotte noticed, with not a little surprise, that there seemed to be seedlings starting in the garden. Her heart caught in her throat, and she choked her surprise. She was soon to be seen carefully spreading netting over the garden, warding off birds, and watching. A week later, the flowers had sprouted well. Rose bushes, poppies, and lavender came up with a mad abandon. The flowers were intense and pure. The smell was beautiful. Never had two rows of earth seemed so full of growing life. Charlotte watched and weeded. Then she called her brother.

They looked at the garden together. They looked at each other. It was about ten minutes later, as she wandered through the garden, that Charlotte realized her brother was crying silently. She went to him, put her arms around him, and sighed.

Together, they took the flowers from the garden, and put a bunch upon her grave. And the flowers there, from seed no doubt, took root and grew. They grew and filled the churchyard. At Charlotte's wedding some years later, it was the smell of lavender and roses that blessed the ceremony, and at the death of her brother many years after that, lavender and vine roses covered his grave in weeping wreaths.