Errand A First Year Garden Gnome Solo Finished

Santario had arrived on the train on the 15th and had allowed herself a week to get used everything before really diving into anything. She preferred to people watch, and summer activities were a great time to do that. However, she also wanted to help out and heard that there were some chores that could be done. She read that there would be compensation but that was just an added bonus to her she liked to earn her privilege of being able to be here early. It had allowed her to go to the platform with her parents instead of going alone.

As she stepped outside, she took a deep breath of the fresh air and made her way towards the garden. Although she was fully capable of doing dishes and cleaning, she felt she was best suited in the gardens. After all that was where she spent the most time with her mother besides watching her make potions. She had been working in the garden since before she could walk though and dirt under her fingernails didn’t bother her in the least. Sometimes you had to get dirty to be the best and if you weren’t the best than what were you? A Stepping stone for someone else to be the best, that’s what.

As she came upon the garden, she would collect the tools supplied to help her with her task as she had yet to properly learn any magic to assist her. With her hands on her hips she surveyed the garden and assessed the layout of all the plants. “Weeds, we’ll start with those.” She did not put on any gloves for this as getting weeds out by the roots was a much easier task if you had full maneuverability with your fingers, and getting the roots made it so the weed could not grow back without a new seed germinating.

She slowly worked her way around the garden taking her time to make sure she got every single weed. Halfway through however she needed to take a small break. She was overwhelmed with emotion of missing home. She had never been away from her parents before, not like this, and it made her chest tight and her face red as she fought back the tears that threatened to roll down her face. The smell of the deep earth reminded her so much of her mom and she just missed her so much. She let her hands rest on her knees as she sat on her feet in the dirt and forced herself to take a few deep breaths and blinked rapidly to force the tears away. Once she calmed herself, she would continue with her weeding. At the end of her weeding task she saw that someone had planted mint unchecked. “Oh no!” her hands flew to her face without thinking about the dirt that was now smear on her porcelain, pale cheeks.

“No, no guys Mint is invasive. I need to fix this immediately it’s already starting to move into it’s neighbors’ areas.”  She was of course alone and talking to herself or the garden who really knew, but sometimes you just had to talk especially when you were used to being by yourself. Standing up she would place her hands on her hips and look around for any kind of paving stone, brick, or even bits of wood she could use. It took her walking to the back of the greenhouse to find some broken decorative bricks that seemed to have just been chucked back there and discarded. It would take Santario five trips to get the required material back over to the garden. She had set the broken pieces of bricks in five neat stacks next to the mint on the outer edge of the garden. “Ok mint, you can stay here but you’re going to have a new lease agreement. You can’t be allowed to take over the whole garden. You have to let the other vegetables and herbs breathe too.” Taking a trowel, she would gently carve around the roots and lift the mint out of the garden setting them to the side.

Once all of the mint was carefully removed, she would take a smack shovel and mark out the square plot that the mint was planted in and start digging it out. She would dig about 61 cm down on all four sides and dig out the middle. When that was finished with would layer the bottom of the square with the pieces of the decorative break and then build up the walls. This would act as a barrier for the mint so that it could not grow into any of the other plots and start to take over the entire garden, because if mint went left uncheck it would do just that.

Once the walls were built up to just 2.5 cm higher than her whole, which actually made her run back for a couple of more pieces of the brick, she would start filling the hole back up with dirt. Once the mint was gently replanted back into their plot with a nice little decorative border, she would move over to gently untangle and remove the mint that had invaded some of the other plots that were net to it. More dirt had no doubt been smeared on her face as she wiped away sweat throughout the day. “Beautiful okay what else can we do to make you shine?” She would let her piercing blue eyes drift over the garden before spotting some plants that could use a little extra support. Sometimes the dirt was just not capable of supporting a stalk without building it up a little bit around it. It could also be done by tiring it to a wooden stake, but this was an easier fix to perform right now.

Making her way over to those plants she would use the extra dirt she had removed from the mint and built little mounds around the bottom of the stalks allowing them to have the support they needed to properly produce their bounty. She had been working in the garden for hours now as she stood up and clapped her hands together to remove the excess dirt. Surveying the area, she smiled proud of all the hard work she had done. “I hope they are happy with what I’ve done.” She said quietly to herself as she walked away to go get cleaned up.  

Word Count:1078