Road Trip With a Stowaway

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In today's mail our Home Depot Contractor's Credit Card bill came in. Included was a 'reward' voucher for a DeWalt table saw with all the bells and whistles at half the regular price. Hubs has had his eye on this saw for some time and the opportunity to get it was too good to miss. So we gathered our water bottles and hit the road. We were taking a tight turn onto the secondary highway when from behind me I heard a thump, a bump and an OUCH! I turned around and looked, and there on the floor was Megs! She had been just outside my front door when she heard hubs and I talking about going into the city, so she promptly snuck into our truck (no we don't lock our doors to anything here!) and curled up on the floor in the back seat. Well I was gobsmacked! Megs willing to take a road trip? I had hubs pull over while I explained to her that we were going into a CITY, where there would be a LOT of people, confusion, and things she wouldn't understand. But she was adamant about being with me. She had missed our coffee klatch this morning and was determined to spend the rest of the day with me. She was wearing a huge floppy straw hat and a long flowing summer dress with a pair of also floppy, Adidas. Not too odd! LOL Frankly I was scared out of my mind about the whole thing. I really wasn't sure how she would handle it. Hubs drove straight to Home Depot and when we got out of the truck, I took Meg's hand and held on tight. I told hubs to go and get his saw and put it in the truck, and Meg's and I would spend our time in the garden department. Most of it is outside and I thought the plants would keep Meg's attention occupied and happy, rather than take her into the store proper which would be an unfamiliar sensory overload for her. So into the garden area we went. I'm an idiot. Meg was so enchanted by all the different plants, that it only took her a moment to pull away from my hand. She flitted up and down the rows and before I could blink, I'd lost sight of her. I started to run, but didn't yell for her, just prayed she'd stayed within the garden centre. I came around the bottom end of the perennial rows and found her on the floor holding a potted dianthus in her arms like she was cradling a doll. I crouched down beside her and saw tears running down her cheeks. I wrapped my arms around her and asked her what was wrong. "This place, this place!", she said. Oh sh*t, I thought, this was a big mistake! I finally got her to make me understand that she was upset that the plants were in pots, not in the ground. "How can they grow without being in the ground?", she asked. It took some time and the purchase of quite a few plants to make her understand that they COULD be put in the ground from the pots and they would do just fine. We spent another half hour picking out plants that she recognized - pansies, dianthus, marigolds and Queen Anne's Lace (which she loved!) and a couple of small Black Eyed Susans which grow along our road here. Hubs found us, raised his eyebrows at MORE plants, which I assured him were NOT for our garden (we've reached our limit of planting for this year! lol) and began the trip home. Megs sat in the back surrounded by plants and didn't say a word. But she didn't stop smiling or stroking the leaves and flower heads either! When we got back to town, hubs drove straight to her place, and dropped Meg's, me and the plants off. He returned a few minutes later with my planting trowels and a large watering can with root starter in it. Megs and I spent the rest of the afternoon planting a garden along the front of her little house. She was over the moon! After I showed her how, she planted her first plant, patted the earth around it, leaned over it and gave it a kiss for 'luck' and then laughed out loud in sheer joy. It was one of the best afternoons I've ever spent. She was like a kid in a candy shop. We talked about how to care for them, and NOT to pull them out, or pick the flowers for a long time yet, and other things. We talked about weeding them and keeping the soil moist - which meant hubs had to hook up a hose with a gentle spray nozzle on the end so she could water them herself without drowning them. But she's told me that she'll 'come and fetch Miz Mayor' when she wants to water her garden! LOL So now Megs has her very own patch of life and color and sheer enjoyment. After dinner when I was taking my nightly constitutional, I found Megs sitting on her little lawn with her back to the street, facing her flowers and 'watching them grow'. I wasn't going to disturb her, but her sixth sense where I am concerned made her turn around and before I knew it, she was pulling on my hands and leading me to the plantings. "See!', she said. "See how happy they look?!" A good watering had perked them up considerably from the way they looked in the garden centre, but I let Megs think that it was HER that had made them look so good. I'll bet you ten to one, that if I went out now (it's 1:30 am here right now) that I will find Megs still sitting on her little patch of lawn watching her happy flowers grow! LOL At least tonight will be one night she wont' be flitting around the village streets peeking in windows and such! LOL