The Garden Shed

Sim Sim the gardener was a quiet stoic man. His wife could never understand what he was thinking and he spent all his time tending his garden of vegetables. He would spend all day in his plot, digging and weeding, lovingly caressing the tender earth with his hands, as his trowel dug up and tilled the mud.

His wife would often stare from the kitchen window wondering why he would spend all his time in the garden and never with her, however he would never broach the subject.

Sim would be in his garden until daylight dipped behind the shed, the place he would often go to disappear from the world to be by himself. 

When his wife asked once if she could look in the shed he got very angry with her and crossed the door with his hand. He didn't say a word but she knew what he meant. Now it had a bolt and lock hanging from it which she knew not where the key lay.

Sim was in the shed a lot these days, and when Kan his wife looked out from the kitchen she could tell he was hiding from the world, inside that brown wooden hut at the bottom of the grass.

Kan was thinking of leaving Sim, his silence and moods were getting too much for her. As Sim toiled every day in the garden he was spending more and more time in the shed and she wondered what was in there.

Then one day as Kan was standing in the kitchen she saw Sim appear from the shed and walk through his garden without care for the branches and fruit that lay at the end of them. He proudly strode up from the bottom of the grass to the top of the garden and smiled for the first time in what seemed like years at Kan in the kitchen window.

She opened the door to let him in wondering why for once he looked so happy, then she saw he was hiding something in his hand.

He didn't speak but uncovered his hands to reveal a little pot with a small flower inside it and he proudly handed it over to Kan who was bemused at the gift. Sim motioned to her to look down at the flower and she did, finally noticing the brilliant blue and pink colours of a little orchid flower, spurting from the pot. 

Sim smiled and kissed Kan on the lips, an out of character move for her husband but then she realised what he had been doing in the shed. He had grown the Orchid for her inside that hut. She didn't say anything but realised her husband did love her after all. She proudly put the Orchid up on the ledge and then Sim took her hand and they walked upstairs.

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