The sun peeped through the curtain as Lizzie stretched in her small bed, her kitty snuggled close to her, purring softly. Lizzie reached under the far edge of her pillow. Yes, her Secret Garden was there. Putting her feet on the floor quietly, the book tucked under her arm, she took her pedal pushers and ruffled green shirt off the chair. She tiptoed out of the room, careful not to wake her little brother.
Quietly down the stairs into the kitchen, she grabbed a peach, three cookies, a carton of milk and went outside. She pulled on her red and white polka dot boots at the doorstep. Skipping to the garden shed, she took her small garden tool bag and stuck two cookies and the milk inside, wiping peach juice from her little chin.
To the meadow! Beyond her yard was a huge meadow with five tall fir trees at one end with peach and pear trees along the border, plus a big apple tree right in the middle. Pink, blue, purple, yellow, white, and orange wildflowers scattered amongst the grasses.
The night before she had whispered as she was tucked in after story time, “Mommy, I really want to spend all day tomorrow in the meadow. Is that okay with you?”
“Sure honey, there will be a packed lunch on the back porch for you when you want it. Take what you want for breakfast. You are such a big girl now. Daddy and I will sleep in as long as we can since it is Saturday.”
Lizzie smiled to her herself as she danced into the meadow, her boots jiggling up and down as she went. The sun was bright, there were wisps of white clouds in a mostly bright blue sky. She sang as she went, “Zip a dee do da, da, da… zip a dee aye, my oh my what a wonderful day day day….hmmm, hmm, hmm, hm, hm ….zip a dee aye!”
Lizzie had a plan, but she needed to think how to do it. Lying on her tummy, her elbows sinking into the soft green, she peered closely at golden buttercups, tiny pink asters, and she picked lavender clover blossoms, sucking on the little petal ends. As she scanned the meadow, she imaged possibilities. She turned on her back and opened her Secret Garden book to the bookmark, an read:
“…Mary put her hand out the window and held it in the sun. ‘It’s warm—warm!’ She said, ‘that will make the green points push up and up and up, and it will make the bulbs and roots work and struggle with all their might under the earth.’”
After she read a few pages, Lizzie put the book back in her pack. Where, oh where, should I make my own secret garden? she wondered. Maybe near that pear tree. She looked across the long grass to the smallest tree which was furthest from the house.
Kicking off her boots she rose barefoot and went to study the tree. Sun shone through its branches. She went around and around the trunk figuring the best spot. On the opposite side from the house, she began to draw lines in the dirt. She needed a little fence…made from what? She skirted over to the tall fir trees for cones and twigs. Yes! These would work.
Cone by cone, their rough surface rubbing her palms, Lizzie lined them around the edge dirt lines, leaving an opening at one end. Oh dear, I need something else…but what? Maybe there was something in the garden shed. Lizzie went to the shed, carefully looking around. There was a pile of little boards behind a pail. They might help. They were cracked but still okay.
Two hours later, Lizzie had a little fence marking her garden area, made of wood pieces, cones and sticks. It was fun to make, and Lizzie had taken her time. A bluebird perched in the pear tree as she worked. He is tweeting messages to me, she thought.
Like Mary in The Secret Garden, she was making friends with a bird. Lizzie knew he was talking to her in bird-language and just twittered back as best she could. After all, she talked to her kitty in “marrow, meow”…
“People talk is not the only kind,” she whispered.
Lizzie sat down in a mound of long grass, ate her second and third cookie, and drank her carton of milk. The breeze blew her hair and the sun warmed her cheeks. She read a bit more in her book. I like Mary so much and now I will have my very own secret garden! Okay, I need to start planting, a little bit of seeds and few plants today, more later.
Taking her little garden shovel, she went to a group of buttercups. “Excuse me, dear buttercups, I am going to move you to my new garden. I will be careful and give you lots of water. Thank you for being so pretty!” Lizzie, carefully dug around each buttercup plant, and one by one carried them to her plot near the pear tree. She tucked them into new holes in the earth and rushed to get water right away. Filling her pail at the hose back by the house, she balanced it as she went back to her plants and watered each carefully. Next she took a packet of johnny-jump-up seeds from her pocket and fingertip pushed them into the soil near the buttercups. She had gardened with Mommy since she was two years old, and so knew a lot for a five-year-old. She would come every day to check on her little plants and give them water, and to discover more ways to grow a garden of her own.
“Hmmm, I’m hungry, I need to eat lots to be a strong gardener.” She remembered there would be a sack lunch for her by the back door. “If you’re happy and you know it….”Lizzie sang as she barefoot-scampered to the house, took her lunch and sat under the big apple tree. Curling her legs under her, she opened the bag. Oh, yum, her favorite sandwich, tomato and mayonnaise. “Mmmm, mmm,” oh the juiciness of the tomato was so good. She thirstily drank her milk and slowly chewed the little bag of potato chips with happy crunches.
Feeling full, she ran back to her garden plot. “Caw, caw, caw….caw, caw” a big black crow flew above her, coming down on the pear tree’s highest branches.
“I will bring you some peanuts tomorrow, Crow.” I think he is my friend, too. Lizzie was delighted to be making bird friends, just like Mary. Just then a bright green garter snake wiggled into her garden patch. “And you, too, little one. There is room for you.”
Lizzie dug, planted, and watered all afternoon. Standing barefoot in her little patch, elbows bent with her soil covered hands on her hips, Lizzie sighed, “I am proud of myself. Look at all I did in one day.” She scanned her rickety little fence, the replanted buttercups, asters and saw her little seed grooves, knowing they would soon show little green shoots. She smiled broadly and lifted her face to the beautiful blue sky with its billowing cumulus clouds.
Author: Wendy Lamson Collier
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