Sunflower's Sorrow

Melanie Timbal stepped outside to gaze upon her garden. Sun-bleached auburn hair held up in a bun, clad in an old pair of painter pants, trusty little trowel in hand, pruners pocketed, she was ready for today's tending. She put her favorite pair of work gloves on; they were the older ones, the ones ripped and torn, but still, the ones she loved most of all.

The sun was shining, and all seemed right in the backyard. She glanced around the space, admiring the careful and thoughtful work she had put into the garden; everything looked well; all was lovely, vibrant, and blooming with life.

Melanie's backyard, though not as big or grand as others, was space aplenty for her. Carefully curated to ensure each plot she planted got enough sunlight with enough space to grow and thrive, she had made quite the enviable garden, indeed. The garden had come along nicely. There had been naught here when she started, just a bare patch of grass, yellowed and in desperate need of love—Melanie had built her garden from nothing.

Four plots, one in each corner of her backyard, each fostering their own precious buds and bulbs inside. Melanie squatted down, the wind chimes singing their song a bit more softly today than on the other days that had come before.

She would start with the hydrangeas; they needed the most careful watching, after all. The health of any decent garden can be judged by how well its hydrangeas fare.

Purple and lavender, pink and blush, all the hydrangeas seemed to be full of color and, therefore, usually, full of life too. All looked well with them, and Melanie was pleased with herself. She had been about to get up when she spotted it. Roots. Sticking out from the surface. Not in her garden, no, surely she wasn't seeing things right. Rubbing her eyes and looking again, they were still there; some of the roots of the hydrangeas were poking out from beneath the surface. Melanie was aghast; she wasn't some newbie gardener after all; she should have seen the signs if something was wrong. Should have, but didn't. After some fussing about, spreading of earth, and tender but firm patting of the soil, Melanie had the roots buried back. That was better; it took a bit of work and some time, but she had restored this plot to its carefully loved and prosperous state.

Standing back up, Melanie brushed the dirt from her knees and moved on to the following plot. Time to tend to the marigolds. Marigolds, an easily overlooked flower, can flourish and bloom into beauty beyond belief when given the right time and attention. Really, no gardener of sound mental state would do right by omitting marigolds from their garden, a true necessity.

She removed a glove to feel the soft, supple leaves of the flowers. Their color had looked good from afar, all golden and bright. Closer up, though, she saw that they weren't the proper golden color they should be; they had dimmed. Now they looked more of a flaxen-yellow than they should have. She knew that sometimes flowers lost a bit of their color, especially after they had been pollinated. After pollination, when they no longer need to attract suitors, the flowers have the tendency to dim. To a non-gardener, this may seem a trifling issue, but to a true green-thumb, a gardener of Melanie's calibre, this was most distressing. At first, she couldn't make up her mind about what to do with them. Melanie hummed and hawed, not really having a fix in mind. She watered them a bit and added some more fertilizer to the plot; maybe the color would come back, maybe it wouldn't. She supposed she could leave them as they were for now, at least. They looked well enough from afar, and she had other, more pressing plots to tend to.

Despite the somewhat dreary marigolds, Melanie found herself smiling widely as she stood again. It was time for the sunflowers. They were her favorite part of the garden, their sociable and spritely stalks swaying to and fro in the wind. Everything about them brought joy to Melanie; she cherished them above all else.

Stooping over, she was once again aghast. Weeds! In her garden, in the sunflower plot, no less. She wouldn't stand for it, not for one second. They must be removed at swiftly.

Toiling between the stalks was a difficult business; she didn't dare brush up against any one plant too firmly for fear they would snap. Crawling and cursing, Melanie did her best to rid her beloved sunflowers of the pesky intruders. "How dare they sully the soil of my beloved sunflowers?" She muttered under her breath while she worked at stripping the invaders away. After not a small amount of time had passed, Melanie stood once more, back weary from being bent for so long. As she went to turn away from the sunflower plot, she caught something out of the corner of her eye. Was that stalk a bit too… twisty? She turned back, but the stock in question looked normal, straight as an arrow. Peculiar. She wiped the sweat from her brow, and stared at the large pile of ripped-out weeds she had cleansed from the soil.

"That's better," she said to no one in particular. Then, satisfied with her work to keep the sunflowers full and strong, she moved on to the last plot.

Lavish and lush they were. These morning glories had been a vain addition to her garden. Some people cared deeply for the material possessions in life, but Melanie thought these morning glories were more than enough in terms of superficial additions to the garden. Any more extravagant beauty, and the garden would have been gaudy; less, and it would have felt a bit barren. These flowers were just enough to keep the beauty in things.

Going down to one knee, Melanie moved and inspected the trellis that the morning glories grew on. Suddenly, she got a bit dizzy; all this standing and stooping had gotten to her, and for a moment, the whirling and twirling of flowers before her looked like faces. She rested one hand on the ground to steady herself and gave her head a slight shake. No, she was okay; it's just the flowers were a bit too colorful, or maybe she was a bit dehydrated or something. Yes, that was surely all, nothing to fret over.

She turned her attention back to the flowers once again. Reds, pinks, purples, and blue with every hue in between. God's how they were lovely to look at, all the more irksome that they gave the smallest satisfaction in growing. As the wind chimes stopped their already muted singing in the background, Melanie noticed a truly dire problem in the plot.

The morning glories were stricken when pests: aphids and slugs. Scouring and scourging her pretty leaves, how dare they! She swatted and scooped, trying her best to get rid of the bugs without the aid of chemicals—Melanie didn't like to use chemicals on her plants, not since the incident back in '04.

A short time later, whether from being too tired or being too weary from tending all the other plots on the long day—Melanie didn't know—but she had not an ounce of strength left in her to give anymore.

Groaning and grumbling, Melanie stood back up for the final time. She shuffled over to her deck to admire her handiwork. Scanning across the backyard, she saw her blossoms once more. Fresh and livened up, they all looked in better health now. She was about to sit back down when she saw it again, the twisting, contorting of the sunflower stocks, her prized sunflowers; something was wrong with them. Melanie shambled back down the steps and hurried across the grass.

"No, no, no," Melanie clutched at the sides of her head. What terrible trick was this? The sunflower stalks were bent; she knew it. How hadn't she seen it?

Then, from the edge of her vision, she saw that every single one of the hydrangeas had been uprooted. Not a single one was left in the soil where they belonged.

"No, no," Melanie was mortified; this was the absolute worst thing that could happen; her precious garden was in tatters. She rushed over to the hydrangeas to repair them or do what she could to help them.

She was stopped dead in her tracks, though; the entire plot of marigolds was grey. Not just the leaves. The soil, the wood holding the plot together. Every last petal and stem had lost its color, like it had been sucked right out of them when she had her back turned.

"How could this happen to me?" Melanie asked aloud as if crying to god to show this poor gardener some mercy.

"Not in life, not in death, you cannot mend the sins for which you won't repent,” A soft jingling voice said from somewhere over her shoulder.

Melanie whirled around, "Who's there? Who said that?" She brandished her trowel in defense of herself. There shouldn't be anyone else in her garden. Something about the voice that spoke unsettled Melanie. It had a soft, tinkle-like quality, hardly identifiable, a whispering clink of a tone.

"Who's there!" Melanie bellowed the words out into the deadly still air of her garden. Then a strong breeze chose to start up, unravelling loose strands of her hair and swirling them about her face.

"Not you," came the voice again, followed by a giggling from off in the fourth plot of her garden.

Melanie stared, disbelieving, as the twisted, mocking faces of the morning glories looked back at her.

"Regrets and what-ifs, that's all you'll find here, no sunsets, no clear cliffs!"

The flowers were speaking to her. Melanie's head felt fuzzy; she felt dizzy. This wasn't real. How could this be real? She fell to the ground. The roiling wind was almost a gale now, stronger and stronger it grew.

"Why! Why am I seeing these things?" Melanie scrambled to get away from the devilish flowers. Not sure what nightmare she was living, Melanie grew more frantic. The wind chimes were booming now too, clattering as loud a chorus that had ever been heard.

Then came a new voice. A cold voice, grim and unwanted voice from somewhere far off behind her.

"We all see how we could have tended to life differently in the end."