The Captain gave me my orders to go out and attend his rose bushes in the garden, or as I like the call it, the labyrinth.
“Just make sure they still have that color and scent. I don’t ever want my roses to die out,” he said roughly. This man was big, bold, and husky. But the longer I worked for him, the more I got to notice that he was like a waffle; crispy on the outside, soft on the inside. Well, maybe that metaphor was a little silly. But you get my point.
“I will attend to your roses accordingly, Sir.” As I began to walk away, he called my name as I was just about to exit the room.
“Miss,” he said hoarse. I glanced behind my shoulder to show that I was listening.
“Don’t dig too deep around the bush. With the weeds, you know.” I nodded. “Yes Sir.”
I finally made it to the roses after making my way through the green maze, with a scent surrounding my senses that was so welcoming and seldom that I never wanted to leave. Even 5 years of doing the same thing every day, I never got tired of the feelings I got when coming into this garden.
I got out my clips and put on my gloves, and started trimming the bush and it’s wild petals. I always attended the looks of the bush first, and then I would make my way down to the soil and roots. Finally as I perfected the trimming and whatnot, I finally made my way down to the soil. There was a lot more weeds then yesterday… I was actually sort of puzzled. I haven’t seen weeds come back so fast. I decided to shake it off and move on with my duties. I dug my fingers around in the dirt, pulling the weeds as I went. I wasn’t paying attention and caught myself digging in too deep of the soil. I didn’t want to get down too close to the roots. I panicked and started putting the soil back in place, hoping that the Captain wouldn’t notice. I wonder why I had been dozing off lately. I really needed to keep my head out of the clouds. I patted down another handful of soil, when I stopped. I had caught something out of the corner of my eye. I saw a glimmer. So quick that I thought maybe it was one of the situations where when you look directly at what you thought you saw, it was gone. As if it was never there. Like a shadow, or a ghostly figure playing a trick on you, trying to freak you out, or make you think you’re crazy.
But when I looked at whatever the glimmering object was, it didn’t go away. It didn’t disappear. It was there all right. It wasn’t trying to play a trick on me, and it wasn’t trying to freak me out.. As I dug the dirt back up, I knew then that I wasn’t crazy either. As my eyes widened to what had just been discovered, I completely removed the soil from the astounding object in my hand. At first, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was amazed, in awe, and overwhelmed with joy. Yet frightened because of what might happen if anyone else found out about it.
Yes. I was digging in the Captains garden and found a fist-sized nugget of gold. This gold could retire me, I could be rich! And I had come to a sudden realization. I remembered why the Captain always said “Don’t dig too deep…” He always said that to me, every day. I was so used to it, I never even thought about it. And now, it finally made sense. The Captain didn’t love his roses… he loved his gold.