The Bizarre Adventures of Doctor Who

Among the Evergreen Pt. 2

Going through the schedule, Lila went around, checking on patients, getting their names, understanding why they're in the mental hospital.

One of the patients Lila oversaw, Trudy, suffered from bouts of depression while living in an abusive home, almost took her life because of it, and now resides at the mental hospital where she's monitored, but given resources that allowed her independence.

One of which's her treasured garden, she works on it daily until bedtime, she says it helps to take her mind off things, and she loved seeing her garden grow in time.

Hated it when people cumbersomely walked over it, that Neal ended up having a fence put around her garden, keeping people from making the same mistakes.

Neal's one of the doctors working in the mental hospital, and he thought having fencing around the garden would've helped improve Trudy's condition, knowing that her garden's not in any danger.

Out of curiosity, Lila asked about Trudy's garden, and she just about talked every bit of air out of her lungs, the way she described her garden in great details.

Every corner of the garden served a purpose and Trudy happily talked about how she carefully constructed her garden.

Certain species of plants couldn't coexist in the same spot, so Trudy planted them on opposite sides of the garden.

She used rounded stakes for plants sprouting vines, needing something to grab as they grew upright, green squiggly vines tightly wrapped themselves around the stakes.

One section's for her gourds, Trudy wanted to make birdhouses, and put them on the trees around the area for the birds.

Another section with vine's her squashes, they're not her favorite of vegetables, but Tommy likes them, so she's growing them for him.

Tommy's another patient, but not on Lila's roster.

"Been busy, I see," Lila noted the countless hours Trudy put work into her garden and the nineteen-year-old excitedly nodded as she answers that at first, she didn't understand anything about gardening, but came to like it after successfully growing pumpkins with some non-toasted seeds, a hole in the ground, and a squirt bottle full of water.

Trudy's mood slowly shifted as she began talking about her troubles, something's getting into her garden, eating the plant part of her tomatoes, roots, and all. The fruit's untouched, lying on the ground, but the plant itself looked like something tore them from the stakes, and chewed on them.

For the first few times, the plants' completely gone, but the other day, Trudy saw bits of a steam heavy chewed lying nearby.

"Must be an animal," Lila reasoned that Trudy's tomato plants garnered an interest by one of the animals living in the forest nearby.

Most animals aren't known for paying attention while grazing, no doubt they made a mess of things trying to obtain one of the many tomatoes Trudy grew, but she said that her tomatoes remained untouched. Even looked like they're carefully put on the ground, some of her tomatoes hung about 3ft off the ground before the plant portion's tore out of the ground.

Hearing how something's eating the plant portion of the tomatoes, but not touching the tomatoes themselves, sounded peculiar to Lila, as they're in the nightshade family, and while the tomatoes weren't dangerous to humans, eating the actual plant risked poisoning, especially if the roots ended up eaten, too.

It further intrigued Lila when Trudy said that she noticed the same happening to her peppers. Like the tomatoes, the pepper plants saw heavy damage from something eating them, roots, and all, but the peppers remained untouched.