Mary, Mary by Ed Nelson & Carol Nelson

Author:Ed Nelson & Carol Nelson [Nelson, Ed & Nelson, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Eastern Shore Publishing
Published: 2019-12-23T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 3: With silver bells, and cockle shells,

The boys at school were still saying I had a brown thumb and that the poem had it all wrong. Billy said it should be:

Mary, Mary quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With devils weed, and evil seeds,

and stinky toadstools all in a row.

It made me so mad I wanted to hit him, I wasn’t allowed to do that or say the words I wanted to. I had asked Davie to beat him up but he wouldn’t do it. He said that Billy was older than him so he would be certain to lose the fight. I asked Patti to tell him she wouldn’t like him anymore but she told me she didn’t want to lie.

What is a girl to do?

I asked Mum at dinner about what could I do to stop them from saying all the mean things. I had tried everything I could think of. I had even thought about going to a teacher and crying about how mean Billy and his friends were but the teachers had seen me practice crying.

Mum told me she had been planning to do something for a long time and now was the time. She was going to start a flower garden with a greenhouse. I wonder why it has to be green.

After dinner, Mum took me to a book store where she bought books on growing flowers. She was interested in Silver Bells, Cockle Shells, and Maids all in a row. She showed me their real names Halesia, Prosthechea Cochleata, and Auriculeas but I couldn’t say those words.

She told me that we were going to grow those flowers. That sounded like fun! Mum bought a whole bunch of books. I hope I didn’t have to read all of them, they had a lot of big words and some of them looked very funny.

The next day at school I told Patti that Mum and I were going to grow the flowers in the poem. She told Davie and he told the other kids.

When I got home I told Mum at lunch about all the kids making fun of me. I really am mad at Patti she promised me she wouldn’t tell anybody. Mum explained to me that revenge was a dish best served cold. That made sense as I didn’t think you could cook revenge, maybe it was some sort of desert, like Tam Tattlers Tart. Mum always promised those but never gave us any.

After lunch Mum had our driver and my new lady guard, Sally, take us to a garden center. It was a big one with all sorts of plants indoors and outdoors. There was even a big fountain. It was fun to splash the water. Mum didn’t like me getting my dress wet but thought it would dry out quickly.

She spent a lot of time talking to a man. He took us around the lot and showed us a building that was all glass. He called it a greenhouse. The front was painted white so I wonder why they named it greenhouse.

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