by Philp Babitsky

Created on: May 21, 2009   Last Updated: October 26, 2009

THE POPPY PATCH

It was a cool autumn day, being on a study break, my days involved lying around the house and being useless to my surrounding family. I continuously basked in the glory of having nothing to do and being an annoyance to my mother, who throughout her entire life had been used to hard daily work.

So there I was lying on the couch and flipping through the TV channels, the sound muffling the calls of my mother. Eventually she came close enough:

"Son...SON! don't you think its time you did a little gardening?" she said.

Even without turning my head, I replied:

"What garden ? we have nothing out there, except for a small patch of grass, that's being consumed by weeds, and the remaining poppies are barely alive." Only the porch provided some cover for the remaining poppies against the strong autumn winds and the occasional birds that lacked fiber in their diet.

Even the birds began to congregate outside, mocking and pleading me to restore order in the Garden, so that worms and flowers could be accessed easily again. Giving in to all the pressure I got up slowly, put on a pair of heavily used garden sneakers, put on a jacket and went outside.

As I entered the backyard, a behemoth of a wasteland spread out in front of me. What was once a thriving and neatly organized garden, of well cut grass and patches of beautiful flowers, was now nothing more but a semi-muddy earth with small patches of grass scattered everywhere, together with autumn leaves and branches covering the tops.

The two birds returned and sat on the fence above me, looking at me. I could only imagine what they were thinking or chirping away to each other.

"Look at him chip, look at how lazy he is, he's barely moving towards the Garden to retrieve some worms for us. While these humans are lazing around their warm big nests with plenty to eat, we are starving to death out here in the strong winds."

The other bird, Chop, looked back at him: "indeed old friend, who do these humans think they are letting us starve like that, we barely have enough grass to eat. I have personally had my last bowl movement 3 days ago with this lack of food."

As I watched them chirp away and pass me some glares I made my way to the garage to retrieve a sharp edged weed-removing spade. Then turned back towards the garden. I got on my knees on the once thriving field of grass and began to uproot all the weeds. It seemed like a daunting task, however the weeds were fairly scarce,

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