There were a large number of spider webs but they didn’t bother Amanda. Her mother had told her as child that spiders were her friends, confirmed by her favourite book as a child:Charlotte’s Web.Instead she greeted them.
‘Hello, spider friends, catching some nice bugs and flies today?’ she asked as she opened a drawer and found the gloves Simon had mentioned. They were worn yellow leather with extra padding on the fingers and palm, and well loved, she thought, as she tuned them inside out to check for any further spider friends.
She turned them back to the right way and slipped her hands into them, feeling the softness of the leather that seemed to have been made just for her hands.
Keeping them on, Amanda moved some broken pots from the shed and put them outside the door. There were also some broken stakes and a plastic watering can with a split down the side.
Soon Amanda was busy making a pile of things to throw out and enjoying the process. It wasn’t lost on her that she should have done this to her flat in New York, but it felt different doing it outside in her own little potting shed. Eventually she decided to clean out the potting shed completely and had a pile of items that were usable on one side of the path and another of broken items to have taken away.
As she moved things out of the shed, she found a broom and she swept the floor, coughing at the years of dust and dirt she was disrupting.
Next she decided to clean up the benches. One of them had been hidden behind the stack of pots and she noticed a wooden box with small drawers on the front. She opened a drawer carefully, just in case there was an unwanted surprise of a dead creature inside but instead there were small envelopes, the sort that held buttons on a new top when you bought it from a store. She picked up the first one and blew the dust from it.
Delphiniums – White,was written in neat handwriting with a little symbol next to it of a star.
Dahlia – Jomanda Pink,read the next with a different symbol of a triangle.
Amanda realised each drawer held seeds that were organised alphabetically and she picked up the box and carried it outside, placing it on top of the pile to be kept.
She would take that to Diana to talk about later, she thought.
It was an okay job, she thought as she stepped back and looked at her work.
‘You’ve been busy,’ she heard Simon say and she turned to him.
‘Look at this; I found seeds!’ she said and opened a drawer in the box.
Simon peered inside it and took out a packet and read aloud: ‘Aster – Apricot Duchess.’
Amanda sighed. ‘I know so little about gardening. I need to learn quickly. Can you teach me?’
Simon gave a harsh-sounding laugh. ‘I know about as much as you to be honest.’
‘But you’re the gardener here,’ Amanda said.
‘No, Diana hired me to clean the garden up and pull everything dead out and get it to a manageable state, which, to be honest, is too big a job for one person.’
He sounded defensive as he spoke and Amanda stepped back. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t realise.’
Simon shook his head. ‘It’s fine, I’m just here for the summer to help her out.’
‘And then where will you go?’ Amanda asked.
‘I don’t know yet.’ Simon was looking at the pile of tools that Amanda had leaned against the shed wall.
‘These can be sharpened again. A lot of them are great quality,’ he said, picking up a pair of shears.
‘Do you know how to do that?’ she asked, sceptical at the amount of rust on the blades.
‘Nope, but I think I can learn,’ he said. ‘I’ll go into Newcastle and use the library as there’s no internet here and it will kill my data plan on my phone.’
‘I need to get onto that,’ said Amanda, looking around. ‘There is so much to do and while it’s amazing I won the house, I’m not sure I can afford it. I mean, all of these need to go to the junkyard or whatever you call it here.’ She gestured to the pile of broken items. ‘I need internet, food… I also have my student loan to pay. I have some money from leaving my job but that won’t last long. God it’s so depressing being poor.’ Then she laughed it off. ‘Sorry, you don’t have to listen to my cost of living worries – I’m sure you have your own stuff to deal with.’
Simon gave a short laugh. ‘We all do.’ He paused and then looked at her, his face serious before it changed to a softer expression. ‘Don’t worry about money, just maybe get a job somewhere to pay for day-to-day stuff and I can work on the garden as much as I can since I’m being paid. You can point at things and tell me what to do when you’re not working. It will all sort itself out.’
Amanda nodded slowly. ‘You sound like my mom. Thank you. I needed that reality check. I need to be positive it will all work out, because as she used to say, it usually does.’
Simon loaded the tools into his wheelbarrow. ‘I might look into getting these sharpened, if that’s okay with you?’
