The sun greeted me with a radiant smile and opened my daisy heart of creativity. I spread out my landscape design on a makeshift wooden table near Katie’s Gate. What was with the gate anyway? Gran had never told me why she had that old faded sign hanging on the black wrought iron gate. I sighed. I will never know now she was gone.
I picked up the mattock, walked over to the garden bed-to-be, raised the mattock above my head and slammed it into the hardened earth—again and again and again.
After an hour of repetitive digging I was disappointed that I was only a quarter of the way through my digging plan. My back hurt, my arms hurt, and I had blisters on top of my blisters on my hands. I had to stop. Tomorrow was a new day and I would try again. I was determined to succeed in the soil and garden preparation.