Sarah’s Garden
There once was a girl named Sarah who was searching for the perfect place to plant her garden. It had to be a special place because only a special place would do for the kind of seeds she intended to plant. You see, she was searching for a place to grow love and more importantly, she wanted to grow happiness. Sarah wasn’t much of a gardener, but even she knew that love and happiness don’t just grow anywhere. So, she set off to find herself the perfect place to plant her seeds.
One day Sarah happened upon a small patch of land. It didn’t seem like a place where love and happiness might grow, but there was just something about it that caught her attention. She thought she had once heard of this place, maybe from a friend. She remembered hearing that it was a place to go where you could have fun, find someone to talk to, or even hide if need be. A couple of people had said that they were able to buy happiness there but nobody had ever grown it there. As for love, well, nobody had seen love there in quite some time. As far as anyone knew, it was impossible to grow love there and even Sarah knew that you couldn’t buy love.
Yet still, there was something about it, something she couldn’t explain. Maybe it was the aura that emanated from it. She swore she could sense other things that had grown there before. She could sense confidence the strongest. This place was definitely a place where confidence would grow. There was no doubt about it. She knew that wherever confidence grew, you could always find arrogance, and it was very hard to tell the difference between the two. Although arrogance looked a lot like confidence, it smelled bad and had a bitter aftertaste. She would have to be on the lookout. She saw a place where someone had planted wisdom and left before it had started to grow. She picked it, thinking that, if she could use it, at least it wouldn’t go to waste. She thought that she caught a faint hint of trust in the air, however you could never tell exactly where trust was or where it was coming from.
The more Sarah looked around the less it looked like a place to grow anything at all. She wasn’t so sure that this was the right place to plant her garden. Gardens take time and a lot of hard work so she wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t be wasting her time. The seeds of happiness are hard to come by and, when you do find them, they are almost always overpriced. The seeds of love are even harder to get because they have to be given to you. The last thing Sarah needed was for her garden not to grow. A failed garden can be very disappointing and very, very costly.
A few days later, Sarah returned to begin working on her garden. She started noticing the little patches of happiness lying about here and there, but she had no way of knowing whether it had been grown or bought. As far as she knew, it might not have even come from here. She was reluctant, but she soon decided that she would indeed give it a try, Life is full of risks, she thought, but with any luck, this would be her best garden yet. Sarah knew that this place had the perfect soil, but she was not prepared for what lay ahead of her. She soon discovered that this area had once been a great place to grow love, but it looked like someone had abused it. Abused it so much that there was now a large layer of bitterness on top of the soil. There were numerous thorn bushes all around the perimeter. And for some reason, the happiness that grew here was somehow tainted. This should have been her first warning to grow her garden elsewhere, but Sarah was a Taurus so she persisted.
She worked hard trying to chip away the bitterness that covered the area she had chosen. She worked day and night, hour after hour, wiping endless gallons of sweat from her brow. The days turned to weeks, and weeks to months. There were times when she questioned what she was doing. The layer of bitterness wasn’t so bad but the thorn bushes were constantly bombarding her with constant pain and no matter how many times she cut them down, it seemed that they were back as soon as she was done. Was it even worth it? Over the months, she had broken through some areas of bitterness and had caught brief glimpses of this perfect soil. She took advantage of these times and planted a few seeds of both love and happiness when she found them. But not without taking some punishment from those awful thorn bushes. Although neither of them seemed to be growing as expected, she wasn’t ready to give up yet. Besides, she found the place where happiness could be bought. As long as she had happiness, she could wait a little longer for the love and her own happiness to grow. She wished that happiness could make the pain of the thorn bushes go away. But it didn’t. She knew in her heart that if she could get the love to grow, the thorn bushes would die and the pain would stop.
Eventually, the months turned into years and soon Sarah began to lose faith. She was running out of seeds and the ones she had planted were growing but not very fast. She was so beaten up by the thorns, that she had even begun noticing scars. And she was tired…so tired. She had managed to grow some trust and some respect that she had been fortunate to find, but still she began believing that she may have indeed been wasting her time. When this happened, she began to cry. She cried for many long hours. She wondered why, when she had put everything she had to offer into this garden, her seeds would not grow? Her hopes of love and happiness soon turned into tears of pain and sorrow and they began to seep into the crevices where she had planted her seeds. When her tears touched the soil it immediately began to darken and life began to sparkle where she had planted her love. As the love started growing, the layer of bitterness that she had spent months trying to chip away seemed to evaporate into thin air. Happiness started blooming everywhere and this happiness wasn’t tainted like before. Respect began flowing through the aisles and the thorn bushes immediately began to whither and die. Wisdom was beginning to take form and understanding was not far behind. Trust was growing everywhere and all the love Sarah could ever want was now there for her taking. Her garden had grown far beyond anything she had ever dreamed possible. It seemed to thrive on her very presence, like it depended on her very existence to live. This most likely was a result of her tears being the original spark of life. All too often people underestimate the miracles that their tears can accomplish.
But unfortunately, it was too late. Sarah had already given up and was now in the process of searching for anything she could find to ease the pain and sorrow she had just endured. She never noticed how her tears had awakened the spirit inside the land. How they had brought life back into it. You see, Sarah had decided that she had wasted enough time and shed enough tears on this garden and if it wasn’t going to grow, she would grow one somewhere else. And with any luck it would be her best garden ever. She wasn’t the kind of girl that ever looked back once she made a decision. No time for second chances she always said… Now some people might call this a character flaw, a sign of lack of faith, or maybe just patience wearing thin. But not Sarah. No way. She was a Taurus after all…However, without her there to tend to it, to nurture it, this magical garden was destined to return to it’s former state. It needed her presence to continue to thrive and flourish. After all it was her hard work and tears that brought it to life. If she had taken one more look, she might have found that it was her best garden ever. But she would never return to that awful place. The garden would still remain, and although it wouldn’t grow as well without her, it wouldn’t completely die out either. It would be there for a time. Maybe if Sarah ever visited, she might realize that she had created it and it was hers to do with as she pleased, but until then, iron gates were put up, Noone was allowed to walk on this garden. They were only allowed to see from the boundaries of the gates. Only Sarah had the key and only she could turn the lock that would let the world behold the magical beauty of Sarah’s Garden.
