Love in the Garden

The winters up north were getting to be a little too much for John. As a writer, he spent a lot of time indoors, but didn't hibernate the way some writers do. Since he wasn't the kind of man who could pin himself up in the house all day, he decided to rent a place in Florida for the winter.

The house he chose online was completely furnished. He loaded his desk, computer, and everything he needed into his van and within less than a week, he was settled into his winter home in Tampa.

Eager to get back to work, he sat at the desk with his morning coffee to go through the files on his computer. The temperature was a comfortable 78 degrees outside and every window in the house was open.

Lifting his cup, he stared out the window at a patch of plastic stretched out on the ground in his neighbor's backyard directly behind his house that he assumed was some kind of garden bed. Then he saw her.

She came out of her house through the back door with a trash bag, putting it into the garbage can. She looked to be about his age, maybe a year or two younger, and as the weeks passed, he was convinced that she lived alone and he was tempted to meet her.

However, he had convinced himself that he was just lonely and as pretty as she was, she had to be seeing someone.

As a writer, words came easy to John, but approaching women left him groping for words like a tongue-tied teenager and he was afraid of looking foolish.

Nevertheless, weeks later, he found himself waiting for her to come outside. Looking at his computer, he would glance quickly at her back door at the slightest sound. The woman had gotten his attention and he became obsessed with meeting her.

Every day, he would devise a plan to approach her and every day, he chickened out. Then came the day when she came out her back door early one morning and began pulling back the plastic on her garden patch. From his morning coffee to his afternoon sandwich, she worked on her garden and he wrestled the whole time with the notion of walking out there to meet her, but he just couldn't do it.

Having only a few weeks left on his lease, he became desperate and called Freddy, an old buddy of his up north. "It's good to hear from you, John," he said. "How's Florida?"

"The weather's incredible, Freddy. It's beautiful here."

"How's the writing going?"

"Okay I guess."

"You guess?"

"I got a little problem."

"What's up?"

"There's this woman that lives behind me here and I've been dying to meet her for weeks. You're always

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