The Garden of Forgotten Wishes - Trisha Ashley Page 0,56
Cakes with him, but I soon joined him, pushing him over to one side to make room, and then quickly fell asleep to the sound of his bubbling snores.
13
Follow the Yellow Brick Road
I woke very early, to find a very hairy face pressed in between my chin and neck. When I moved, Caspar rolled onto his back and stretched luxuriously, then lay there like a giant stuffed toy, big feet in the air.
The sky was still a magical dusky, duck-egg blue and I could see the bright pinprick of a star. I love stars; they always make me feel hopeful. I’d hung the crystal one I’d bought in the village in my bedroom window, though I expected that, apart from my day off, I’d rarely be in the flat to see the sun cast prisms from it across the white duvet and walls.
I went through the living room to the front windows, where dawn was a thin hammered silver line behind the hills on the other side of the valley, above Risings.
I heard Caspar land on the floorboards with a heavy thud and then he padded past me and I followed him into the hall in time to see him cautiously headbutt the cat flap, before squeezing through it, in that oddly ectoplasmic way cats have, as if they could just simply materialize somewhere else if they really put their minds to it.
I felt fine this morning; I mean, I’d been doing hard physical work for years, so it wasn’t exactly a novelty. But I was full of energy and anticipation for the job ahead – to reveal the secrets of the rose garden! And who doesn’t love a secret – or almost secret – garden?
I warmed up a pain au chocolat from the freezer – old habits die hard – and had two cups of coffee. Then I was good to go, intending to make a start on Elf and Myfy’s garden.
All was silent from the direction of the café when I went down and let myself out into a diamond-encrusted world of webs and shadows, where the birds had struck up an enthusiastic dawn chorus.
I found all the tools in a small shed by the greenhouse and filled a wooden trug with everything I thought I’d need. They had a few of those big, woven green garden bags, too.
I began to tidy the overgrown shapes of the lavender bushes into neat mounds, like little islands, working my way along the meandering crazy-paving path. There were three woody rosemary bushes that would have to come out, but since they’d take a lot of digging and hacking to get the roots up, I left them for later.
There was the over-rampant Rambling Rector, too. He ought to be firmly dealt with, but I’d borrow the long leather gauntlets from next door before I tackled that.
After an hour or so, the sun was fully up and I cleaned and put away the tools in the shed, then went through to the Grace Garden, where no one was to be seen, if you didn’t count the peacocks, though the lights in the office were already on, so Ned must have been in there, working.
In my rucksack I now had keys to the Potting Shed and Grace Garden, as well as the big ring of keys for Lavender Cottage and the River Walk, so I jangled like a gaoler when I walked.
I’d left the heavy gauntlets and other tools from yesterday together and someone had replenished the big stack of empty garden bags. I helped myself to some plastic plant markers from a box on the end of one of the workbenches, then dumped everything into the small green wheelbarrow I’d used yesterday, which I’d already started to think of as my own, as you do.
I was more organized this morning and had a small notebook and pen in my dungaree pocket, so I could jot down any details I noticed about the roses as I went. I’d even remembered to put my new phone in a zipped pocket in my gilet, so it wouldn’t fall out into the nearest bucket of water or the pond and die a watery death, like most of my previous ones.
I assumed Ned had already fed the fish, since they weren’t hanging about in a crowd at the surface, looking like hungry teenagers, but were just a glimmer in the depths. He must have made as early a start as I had.