Dear Diary,
Something beautiful—and deeply suspicious—has bloomed in Huckleberry Hollow.
This morning, while walking Tiger (he insists), I took my usual shortcut through the community garden plot near the creek. It’s a lovely patch of earth, usually home to half-hearted tomato plants, ambitious zucchinis, and a few lovingly lopsided scarecrows that I suspect are more decorative than functional.
But today… everything had changed.
Overnight, the garden had been transformed. A full rose arbor now stood where yesterday there was only a wheelbarrow with a squeaky wheel. Rows of thriving herbs shimmered with dew—lavender, peppermint, basil, and something I suspect might be lemon verbena. There was a white trellis wrapped in blooming morning glories, a patch of forget-me-nots, and, in one corner, a tiny handwritten sign that simply said: “Take only what you need. Share what you can.”
It was… perfect. Which, in Huckleberry Hollow, always means someone’s hiding something.
Naturally, I launched an informal investigation (with Tiger’s reluctant assistance). First stop: Walter Hargrove. He claimed full ignorance, though he made an offhand comment about “someone finally listening to my design suggestions,” which I’m fairly certain he’s been muttering since 2014.
Second: Marge at the post office, who winked and said, “Maybe gardens just know when we need them.” Which sounds poetic, yes, but also very much like something you say when you’re covering your tracks.
Then there was Max, age 6, who whispered to me very seriously that he “saw someone gardening at night,” but that it “could’ve been a wizard or Ruth in a cloak.” I asked him what kind of cloak. He replied, “The suspicious kind.”
Tiger, meanwhile, has appointed himself Guardian of the Lettuce. He spent an hour curled up in the arugula, pawing at bees and chasing shadows. When I tried to move him, he clung to a parsley bunch like it was his life’s purpose.
I’m beginning to think he knows something. He always does.
So now we have:
- A blooming garden with no known gardener
- At least three townspeople taking secret credit
- A cryptic sign written in mysteriously elegant cursive
- And a cat who refuses to leave the mint bed
It’s lovely. It’s baffling. And it’s exactly the kind of quiet mystery I never want solved too quickly.
For now, I’ll enjoy the flowers, sip my tea in the new shaded nook someone thoughtfully set up, and pretend I’m not actively interrogating anyone who walks by with dirt under their fingernails.
Some secrets, after all, deserve to bloom a little longer before they’re unearthed.
—Lydia
