Blood In The Daisy

The Garden

By the time she had walked out the door and to the little gate that marked the boundary of her garden, Gloriosa's tears had cleaned most of the dirt from her face. She felt realistically sad and slightly hurt by what her father had said, especially considering that was the first time she had heard a cross word from him in her life, but she also knew that what he said was true to some degree. She decided to put her loneliness and sudden emotion to good use by talking to her favorite plant, as this seemed to be a small hint to her garden success, and also her success of not becoming insane due to mass loneliness.

Opening the gate with a small creaking noise, she walked serenely towards the red daisy exactly in the middle of the garden. While walking on the cobblestone walkways of the garden, she pondered all the work she had put into this little haven, and remembered why she made this in the first place.

Lori's mother loved flowers, and spent many a day in her bed with her daughter reading books and showing Lori pictures of different flower species from all over the world. She even made a scrap book of all her and Lori's favorite flowers, with pictures, facts, medicinal and magical properties, and all sorts of other nid-bit things. Eventually, a catastrophe happened that resulted in the loss of Lori's mother, so Lori promised to herself at the wee age of 10 years old to build a place to hold every single flower in the scrapbook woven through the love of and mother and daughter. She kept her promise and by sixteen her garden was finished, with the unknown flower, her and her mother's absolute favorite, placed in the middle.

The garden itself had a square perimeter, with brown picket fencing all around the exterior, coated in Marigold extract to keep most critters away. All the flower beds were elevated to different heights, ranging from 3 inches to 3 feet, and square, with flat stones surrounding the beds, stacked and stuck together with a medieval concrete concoction, creating a stone wall. These stones made a sort of seating next to the flowers, giving easy access to talk to them, and also a shelf to set down gardening tools for caretaking tasks. For walking around the garden, there were cobblestones set into the earth, somewhat ill-placed in many areas, due to the fact that they were done by a 10 year old girl. In middle of the garden, there was a hedge trimmed into an hollow circle, cut through for access directly in front of the gate entryway and straight past to the opposite side. There were cobblestones set for the walkway filling the circle for all but one spot. In the middle of the hedge circle there was a smaller elevated circle that made up the flower bed, with the same stone walls as the other flower beds. This circular bed like all the others was filled with the proper moist soil, but instead of being dedicated to several flowers of the same or different species, this bed only held one flower of one kind, which was obviously the red daisy.

Walking towards the middle ornate crown jewel of the garden, she sat next to the flower on the stone wall upon arrival. Lori then swung her legs up onto the wall and laid down on her side, facing the flower and propping up her elbow for the support of her head. In her newfound resting position, she proceeded to talk to her inanimate company.