The other side

When I was a child, we had a hedge in our backyard.

The hedge was where my world ended. We had quite a large backyard with a swing and plenty of room to play. During the summertime, I spent hours in the yard, but I never knew what was on the other side of that hedge. As I grew up, I started wondering what world would be there.

Obviously it’s where my neighbors lived. Mister and Mrs. Baker were an older couple that stayed inside most of the time. They liked keeping quiet and didn’t get out a lot. Because of this, I never actually saw my neighbors until I was eleven years old.

By that time, I had wondered about the other side of the hedge for years. ‘Who lives over there?’ I had asked my mom numerous times. Every time she explained to me that Mr. and Mrs. Baker liked to keep to themselves, the story seemed less realistic to me. They must do something in there, right? How could they just be watching tv all day? That’s no life.

One day I had the amazing idea to drag a chair from the inside of our home to the backyard, so I could climb on it and look over the mysterious hedge. Maybe I would find something. Maybe they had some magic garden I hadn’t known about all these years. I just had to know.

The chair made scratches on our expensive wooden floor, but I didn’t even realize it. It took me quite some time to place the chair so that I could climb on it and look over the hedge. When I finally did, I saw something I did not expect.

Their garden did look magical. It had tons of beautiful flowers, plants and constructions to keep everything up nicely. I watched how Mrs. Baker carefully picked bright red tomatoes from a branch. They looked so tasty and amazing, way better than the ones at the store. So that’s what they had been doing all this time, I thought to myself.

From that day on I peeked over the hedge about once a week, just to see how the flowers were doing and how the fruits were growing. I noticed that strawberries were green before they turned red and that apples grew on trees and not on plants, like I had always thought.

It was amazing to see what love the Bakers had for their garden, and how amazing it always looked. They never had children, but they took care of that garden like it was their child.

To this day, nothing makes me happier than a lovely garden.

Photo taken by Suttipong Surak (via Unsplash.com)