Fiction writing from the stars, week 3

As has been my wont over the past few summers, I’m taking some time off from pontificating to write some fiction. I asked my 8th graders to provide me first and last lines for potential stories, and it’s my job to fill in the middle. I hope you enjoy! This week’s inspiration comes from Anna Guse.

Wow, look at all these flowers! Roses, peonies, daffodils, lilies, and so many more! A garden is truly a marvelous place to be! 

That’s a lot of excitement over flowers, I know, but I’m amazed at what nature can produce, especially plants. Living deep in the country, a place that you need five gravel roads to find, I love just going for a walk and seeing everything that grows. The giant oak trees give me pause. Maple trees turn such fantastic colors in the fall. Pine trees look glorious in their evergreen nature.

I appreciate those who don’t allow their ditches to be mowed. The wild grasses and flowers provide so much vitality to the bees and other flying creatures. It’s a big part of the ecosystem in which we live and thrive. If we don’t allow these flying critters to do their thing with pollination, we could face a dire future.

I’ve lived a long life, now termed as an octogenarian, and I’ve seen the world grow and change in so many ways. When I was born, we were just coming out of World War II, and my earliest memories were of my parents buying a brand new car so Dad wouldn’t have to walk a mile to get to work anymore. Now, cars buzz along highways with barely a thought to how special an invention they truly are.

I don’t use my car much. I have a large garden from which I get plenty of produce. I’ll go to town a couple times a month to get some staples, but I get my milk from the two cows and three goats I own. Throw in a few sheep, and I’ve got lawn mowing taken care of too. I do have a mower to trim the areas I don’t allow the livestock, around my food and flower gardens.

It’s a simple life, but I rather like it. I spend plenty of time outside, even when I’m reading the copious books I either buy outright or borrow from the library. I don’t need a lot of company, but I do enjoy when my children and grandchildren come for a visit. They live in different states, so it doesn’t happen often. But yes, I own a cell phone so I can talk to them more often.

This satisfaction with what I have, especially since my husband died five years ago, is my whatness. This is who I am, and I discovered that when I got a new neighbor a few months ago.

Dwight bought the parcel of land just down the road from my acre of property. He pretty quickly put up fences on the property line, even though my livestock was fenced in, and he should have no fear of them roaming onto his land, as I made clear when we first met and he asked about them.

He also mowed frequently. Sadly, he took out all the plants growing and thriving in his ditches. The previous owners had let all of that grow, and we had a wonderful stretch of ditchbanks that was filled with buzzing and flying. That changed quickly. Dwight even made overtures that I should follow his lead and how he’d be happy to trim everything down to make things look better and not so shabby. He wasn’t perfidious about things, but still, I declined his offer.

Dwight bordered on being hostile when I continued to refuse his ideas to “shape up” the looks of my place. I patiently explained how I enjoyed what I had and how it looked and that I was looking after our planet in my small ways. He just scoffed. 

People can live how they want, but please don’t tell me how to live my own life. I tried to be polite when we would see each other, but Dwight was stand-offish at best.

When my garden had grown, I spent hours weeding and picking produce. I had more than I needed. In the past, I would bring a lot of my extra food to the local food shelf. This time, though, I decided to offer some to Dwight as a peace offering. I brought tomatoes, green beans, and carrots to him.

He thanked me politely and commented that he had tried to grow a small garden, to no avail. I wanted to say it would have done better if he had let nature take its course and not sprayed pesticides everywhere, but I thought better of it.

A few days later, Dwight approached me as I was out trimming along the fence. He told me how amazing the food was I had given him. After taking a deep breath, he said he had probably been wrong in his approach to cleaning up everything that was growing on his property. He would leave the fence up, but would add some ivy to climb up it. And next year, the ditches would grow and bloom as they had in the past.

How could I have predicted something like this happening?

Word of the Week: This week’s word is perfidious, which means treacherous or deceitful, as in, “The scurvy villain was quite perfidious, looking for ways to cheat and distress those around him at every turn.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!