A Floral Feud

THIS STORY HAS BEEN UPDATED AS "TWO WITCHES AND A WEED"

It was a long war. It had started with snails, moved on to weed seeds, weedkiller, then angry calls to the local Council complaints office, and, possibly, witchcraft.

The two competing territories were side by side in a row of tiny terrace houses. Originally the houses had been decorated with the latest fashions of 1880, with iron lace hanging like cobwebs from the corners of the porches and painted metal railings topped with fleur de lys blades to keep interlopers from stepping into the gardens.

Interlopers who presumably couldn’t figure out how to open the gate.

Every other house in the street had been adapted for modern living, with gardens converted to parking spaces, brick extensions or a collection of wheelie bins and dumpsters.

Denise’s garden was a masterpiece of order. In late summer, the neat clumps of flowering marigolds were hemmed in by taller cosmos and a clipped box hedge. A Comice pear tree was spreadeagled and pinned to make an espalier on the side wall, bordering a garden-less neighbour.

No weed grew past a centimetre in length before being snatched away by Denise’s hands. Bedding flowers were replaced on a rigid timetable, or as soon as they began to look frayed and tatty.

Next door was a different matter. Esther’s garden was a riot of colour and texture at any time of the year, even winter, when the rosehips and pomegranates dangled from bare branches. In the spring she began to scatter the seeds she had saved from the previous year, allowing calendulas, forget-me-nots and poppies to push up through the spreading thyme and make drifts of gold, or red, or blue.

She encouraged native grasses along her border with Denise, a very sore point, because when they self-seeded they were prolific. Even more offensive was the prickly bursaria bush which caught at the arms of passers-by and resulted in frequent complaints from the postal service. She hung coloured crystals and wind chimes from the decaying iron lace on the porch, adding to her reputation for witchcraft.

Esther didn’t deny it. “Naturally I’m a witch. I’m over fifty and a single woman. Back in the day, they’d have burned me at the stake. That skinny shrew Denise too, of course.” She liked to wear home-made tie-dyed peasant skirts that swished around her full figure, and lumpy hand-knitted shawls that made that figure a mystery to any observer.

Denise, on the other hand, liked to look “professional” at all times, even when wearing her smart leather gardening gloves and kneeling on her expensive padded mat, which relieved the pain in her aging knees as she worked her way methodically from one corner to the other.

The third house in the little row was one that had had the front garden converted into a small parking lot, with a side order of dumpsters.

The first Denise knew that the new neighbours had children was the sound of shrill crying at night. Very irritating.

Esther, being closer, saw the ride-on tractor among the wheelie bins, and greeted the harried mother with the toddler in a friendly way.

The older, skinny boy in a paper thin Superman t-shirt started leaning on the railing of Esther’s garden and asking her what she was doing.

“I’m saving seeds from these calendulas, now they’re getting ready to die back. Do you want some?”

“Awesome” said the boy. “Are they like watermelons, that will grow in my stomach if I swallow them? Or in my ears if I don’t clean them?”

“Who told you that?”

“My Dad. He knows lots of things.”

“Hmm.” Esther was not too impressed by the loud-mouthed strutting father, who had run over the toddler's toy tractor on the third day. “Ask your parents if you can come over and I’ll show you some other things in the garden.”

The boy ran inside and got a careless wave of permission from his mother. From then on, he was in Esther’s garden every afternoon instead of riding his bike up and down the footpath in front of the house.

On Saturdays, Esther went to visit her sons and then on to her meditation group. That was the day that Denise was home from work and had extra time to patrol her garden for weeds.

She found a narrow, big-eared face staring at her through the railing. “Who are you?” she demanded. "And why are you wiping your snotty nose on my fence?"

“I’m Rory,” sniffed the boy. “I like your garden. It’s really neat.”

Perfect words for a perfectionist. “I’m not sure my chrysanthemums are doing well this year. I’ll have to chop them back harder this winter.”

“Do they like that?”

“Some things won’t grow properly without being chopped back regularly. They actually seem to like it.”

“Can I help?”

Surprising herself, Denise made sure he had permission, then watched carefully as he pinched out tiny grass seedlings between the pavers. “You’re great at that,” she said. “Most kids aren’t as tidy as you.”

“Would you like some calendula seeds?” Rory offered the little handful he’d been keeping in his pocket.

“Hmm. It’s not really the right season. Let’s put some in a jar for later, and put a few in a pot and see if they grow.”

The neatly coiffed grey head bent low next to the tousled one as they carefully planted and watered the seeds into potting mix.

“Do you want to take it home?”

Rory hesitated. “Things at home tend to break,” he said.

“Then we’ll keep it here.”

Surprisingly, the out of season calendulas began to grow on Denise’s sunny porch despite the cooling season.

One Saturday Esther was running late as she hunted for her bag of treats for her sons when she saw the seedlings. She looked at Denise.

“I see you’ve come around to using calendulas as well as your other marigolds.” she said.

Esther was horrified to realise that the flowers had come from the Garden of Evil next door. Perhaps she would have done something foolish with the pot, except that Rory appeared, beaming at both of them.

“Hello Denise. Hello Esther.”

They greeted him, eyeing one another sideways cautiously.

“Isn’t it a nice day to be in a garden?” said Rory. “Everyone in a garden can be friends, can’t they? It’s all so beautiful.”

Somehow both women found themselves agreeing, for the first time ever.

It must have been witchcraft.