Planting

Due to a warm weekend, I've been working in the garden. Last year I was late getting my seeds in as we were due to go on holiday 3 weeks after Easter and I didn't want to burden my neighbour with cats AND seedlings.We didn't go and the seeds didn't get done either. This weekend I bravely sorted out the shed and got started.
Spring 2009, I bought new greenhouse staging which needed assembling. Kieron's fingers are the ideal size to spin the tiny nuts and bolts and we sat on my raised bed: him spinning, me tightening with spanners, chatting through the trellis with my neighbour. Afterwards, Kieron helped me put everything in place in the greenhouse.
Kieron decided to start growing his own plants. I gave him a bulb of garlic and he separated the cloves and pushed them into soil which he'd already put into pots. We labelled and watered them and popped them in the greenhouse.
Courgettes next, to cries of "YUK!!!" and the boredom started to set in. Off Kieron went to sit on the shed roof and he watched me carry on, talking to me all the time. Within a few days, Kieron was asking how his garlic was and when the first shoots appeared he was impressed enough to ask about the courgettes and I had to identify everything else that was starting to grow.

As the tomatoes made their leafy appearance, Kieron's little fingers helped again, by gently lifting out the seedlings with a lolly stick and putting them into individual pots. He learnt how to make holes in the compost with a stick to ease the plants in, gave up and shoved in his finger instead.He watered religiously every night...every inch of grass, every pot of flowers, every vegetable and every pot in the greenhouse. He would ask me to water him and giggled with delight at his 'accidental' soakings. He would turn the hose pipe on his hair and spike it up, knowing that I wouldn't scold him. Windows got soaked as did the chairs and table on the decking and the cats. He hauled the watering can to the end of the garden, sloshing it as he went to water the smaller seedlings, coming indoors with soggy trainers and joggers.
Ladybirds were bathed and drowning spiders rescued. Squelchy puddles appeared on the lawn and the cats became disgruntled.
This weekend, I took no joy in planting. I did it to grow plants for Kieron's patch of garden, around the bench where he sits every summer, out of the glare of the sun reflecting on his PSP. I sowed antirrhinum  as he likes playing with their 'bunny ears' and thought of the silence in my garden. I caressed the greenhouse staging in wonderment that he helped assemble it. I sat on the raised bed and cried.