Father did end up finishing the garden by himself. I’d complained enough times about my hands that he eventually stopped asking and did the rest without me. I don’t know why he didn’t get Little Sister to help.
It was oddly satisfying to see it empty. The dirt was grounded up into very small bits, like a sprinkle of nuts all over a bowl of rice. Except I couldn’t see the rice, and it wasn’t shaped like a bowl.
A few days later, Father did call us over to help him plant the seeds. These seeds did look like rice, but they had a similar color as the ground. He had them in a small pouch, and gave us each a pinch. This was an activity I did enjoy, as we poked holes in the carpet of dirt and dropped a few of the tiny little grain-like objects into the ground. He taught us how to plant them, poking offset rows of holes roughly half an arms length apart from each other. I asked Father what the seeds were, but he told me it was a surprise.
Several days passed without anything happening. Father watered them using an old bucket with a crack in its side. He punctured several more holes so that he could pour the water in tiny streams onto the patch. Hotaru and I checked back every afternoon to search for the first signs of life. When Father told us they wouldn’t grow that quickly, my little sister stopped visiting everyday. I still inspected it every once in a while, but dropped my daily routine.
The summer moved on. There reached a point where it was too unbearable to go outside in the sun. I stayed under the shade of the roof and only went beyond it during the evenings. I went to play with my friends in the fields during that time. All of us couldn’t stay out too long as the sun set, so we usually only got a game or two of hide-and-seek.
As the weather got nicer, I stopped checking the patch. At one point, I had forgotten about it. I went out to play more often, so much that Father told me I should spend more time with my sister or bring her along. I didn’t want to, so I tried cutting back my time outside just to stop my Father’s lectures. However, it didn’t make things any better, because Father started to teach me more routines to do around the household.
I didn’t enjoy these tasks.