The Garden Plot Divided in Half

After their father died, sisters Eva and Lidia inherited the right to use his community garden plot. Eva wanted straight rows and the same vegetables he had grown. Lidia wanted flowers and a place to sit. Their first afternoon ended with an argument over a packet of seeds neither of them had particularly wanted to buy.

Eva accused Lidia of treating the plot like a leisure space. Lidia pointed out that it was a leisure space, not a monument. Both statements concealed something. Eva feared losing the only activity through which she had felt close to their father. Lidia remembered spending childhood weekends weeding when she wanted to be elsewhere, and felt guilty about the memory.

They divided the plot with string. For several weeks, Eva worked on one side while Lidia painted an old chair on the other. Other gardeners found the arrangement amusing. Then heavy rain washed soil from Eva's neat beds towards Lidia's flowers. They spent a muddy evening digging a shared channel, arguing about its direction but not about why it was needed.

By summer, the string had disappeared beneath leaves. The differences remained obvious: beans in rows, flowers wherever space allowed. Eva sometimes sat in the painted chair; Lidia occasionally harvested vegetables. Neither claimed their father would have approved, because they could imagine him complaining about several things. At the gate, they kept his old wooden marker and added both their names in different colours beneath it.