I am a landscape gardener and quite good at my job. It's also a job that pays quite well once you get a bit of a reputation and I was doing all right. Now you're probably thinking that a landscape gardener would have a terrific garden at his own place, but you'd be wrong. Yes, my place of business has some very nice gardens, but that's advertising.
My home is situated on a double block, with ample room for landscaping and such. Can you imagine the amount of work involved in something like that? It'd be like coming home from work so I could do some more work. I'd just as soon come home from work so I could rest and take it easy.
This is not to say I ignored my large yard. Ninety percent of it was lawn, the other ten percent being evenly divided between some bushes and some flower gardens. Enough flower gardens to make the place look attractive but few enough to make it easy to maintain them. I had also put a few strategic mounds around the place, the mounds also being covered in grass.
These mounds were a big hit with my nieces and nephews. You could play all sorts of games where they were concerned. It was possible, if you were careful, to go all around the yard artfully hidden by a mound all the way. Of course, my nieces and nephews invited other children around to play in my yard and I had no objection to this. The various kids would even come around when my young relatives weren't there, treating the place as a park. The parent didn't mind because they always knew where to find their children.
There was a strict rule that the various visitors did not stuff around with my gardens. I may not have had many but I had some pretty decent flowers in the ones that I did have. The first time someone had tried to stuff up a garden I'd snapped and snarled my way around the yard and all the kids got the message pretty quickly. The gardens were off limits. I didn't worry about balls going in the garden. The kids were careful about retrieving them.
That was the situation when a new family moved in next door. A man and his wife and twins, about age five. The father, Brian, was in his thirties and a complete asshole. I decided this the first time I met him and nothing I'd seen since had given me reason to change my mind. The mother, Alice, was about twenty five. She seemed a nice friendly woman but I didn't see much of her, what with her being home looking after the kids all the time.
Brandon and Marie, the twins, were cute and a pair of mischievous little imps. Born for trouble, the pair of them. This isn't to say they were nasty, just troublesome. They found out about my yard pretty quickly and would often be around there, playing, their own yard being a lot smaller and rather cluttered. I had no objection. I'd made sure they knew the rules about the gardens and let them be.
I heard that Alice had checked with a couple of the parents about me and been assured that I was harmless, so she let them play. She could always stick her head out the window and yell when she wanted them while I tended to ignore them.
That ignoring them came to an abrupt halt one day. I'd finished a job I'd been working on at midday and there wasn't really anything that I had to start immediately, so I went home. My office knew how to contact me if something came up but it was an unlikely occurrence. I hired my people because they were efficient and could make decisions and do their work without me riding them all the time.
So I arrived home in time to find two evil little cretins busy pulling out every plant from one of my gardens. I was not pleased. Brandon spotted me, nudged Marie, and they both took off running. They damn-well knew they weren't supposed to rip up the garden and they were making themselves scarce before the heavens fell on them.
They could run and they could hide but it wouldn't help them much. After all, they lived right next door. I attended to a couple of minor things that I had to do and then headed over to speak to their mother.
I knocked on the door and after a few moments Alice answered it.
"Good afternoon," I said in a cheerful voice. "Alice, isn't it? I'm Ken from next door. I'm here to strangle your children so that I can bury them in the remains of my garden. Could you get them for me?"
Alice looked thoughtfully at me, probably wondering how to handle the madman at her front door. I could guess what she was seeing. A strongly built man of about thirty, dark haired and reasonable looking. Reasonably neatly dressed and, most important, I didn't smell. Women don't like it if a man smells.
Eventually she sighed and opened the wire door.
"I suppose you'd better come in so we can discuss this," she said. "Suppose you tell me what you mean about the remains of your garden."
I explained what had happened to my garden, making sure that she knew that the kids knew the rules regarding the garden.
"They knew they'd done the wrong thing," I told her. "As soon as I arrived they bolted."
"Mm. Probably to avoid the strangulation and burial in the garden," Alice observed.
I bowed my head, indicating assent.
"Ah, I assume that you've got past the strangulation stage by now?"
"I have," I said gravely. "I'm down to stringing them up by their thumbs and flogging them, just as soon as I can buy a decent whip."
"You don't think that that might be a bit harsh?" she suggested.
"Possibly," I agreed, "but they sure wouldn't touch my gardens again."
She nodded thoughtfully, but then shook her head.
"No. I'm afraid I'll have to veto that punishment as well. One moment while I call them and see what they have to say."
She walked over to the doorway and yelled for the little monsters, a note in her voice that said come here or else. They came, looking completely innocent, any possibility of wrong-doing not to be contemplated when looking at them. Then they saw me.
"We didn't do it," said Brandon at the same time as Marie yelled, "It was an accident."
They looked at each other and shut up.
"So you didn't do it and it was accidental anyway," said Alice, and the kids nodded cautiously.
They stopped nodding and started looking guilty when Alice started shaking her head.
"We will discuss this later," she said. "Right now you will go to your room and you will stay there until I come to talk to you. Understand?"
Two little heads nodded and, at a word from their mother, they bolted.
"I am so sorry," Alice said. "They will be dealt with, I assure you."
