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The Leprechaun in My Garden

Patricia Fish


��I re-read the letter from Joseph Baker jr. and smiled in spite of myself. That boy is a bucket of mischief. What on earth was he thinking of when he put the fish in the Dean’s chair? Still, he has such a boyish charm that he will, no doubt, not only get away with it, but the Dean will probably thank him.
��Yesterday, I received a postcard from Emma May- such a lovely name. She is doing fine and has been accepted by three prestigious colleges and she is still a junior in high school!
��I hadn’t heard from Donde in a while, but the last he wrote he was getting ready to go to Summer camp and he was full of little boy joy.
��Stuffing Joey’s letter in my apron pocket, I walked over to my kitchen window to survey my gardens beyond. It was now the height of the growing season and my gardens were not to be left out. In the vegetable patch, tomato plants as tall as me rose from a blanket of cucumber vines that rambled all about. I did the deed and planted some pumpkins, and even now, almost two months before their harvest, they were growing over all available ground surfaces, including several feet of my neighbor’s yard. The flower gardens were doing as well. The carpet phlox blanketed one raised garden, dripping little cross-shaped flowers down from their perch. A swash of black-eyed susans swirled through a field of impatiens. The coneflowers bloomed proud and astilbe waved lovely pastel floral flags.
��The gardens, as I knew they would, called me outside. As I knew I would, I went.
��Some nasty bug was fixing to do some serious damage to a budding cucumber just as I approached. I plucked his hungry bug self right off and flung him into my neighbor’s yard, immediately to the right of my pumpkins growing through his lawn. Another bug became aroused by all this action, and its quick flight startled me to memory. For it was just this same surprise start that caused me to meet the leprechaun in my garden.
��When Ralph first appeared I had a soaring migraine. So of course, I attributed his appearance and our first conversation to the migraine pain that would have me seeing leprechauns in my garden. And I had only ventured outside despite the pain to see how the crocus and burgeoning tulips were doing this mid-March St. Patrick’s Day. Nothing but my gardens would keep me out of bed during a migraine and March is the month that gardens start to happen.
��In my search for the emergence of my favorite Angelique tulips, I brushed aside some daffodil foliage. A spent daffodil became dislodged with the movement and startled me as the bug had startled me just now. As I jumped back in fright, I heard a voice.
�� “What are you so scared for? It’s only a daffodil bloom. Sheesh, I heard you Americans didn’t know how to work a garden. I can see why now. Afraid of a spent bloom.”
��Now this jumping action did nothing to help my migraine and by this time I was seeing some vivid colors and not to mention little voices from within my garden. That is why the conversation came so easily to me, when, in a non-headache state, I would probably be phoning the police for vagrants in my daffodils.
��“I wasn’t scared of the bloom if you don’t mind,” I answered with no mind to my unfriendly tone, “it just surprised me. I have a terrible headache and there seems to be a black fringe around my vision. And who are you anyway?”
��Of course he was Ralph the leprechaun and he jumped out from under a daffodil frond to greet me.
��He sure was small. Then again, I didn’t know a whole lot about leprechauns no matter their normal height. But he couldn’t have been any taller than a healthy pepper plant and what’s that, about two feet tall? He wore the normal attire of a leprechaun, once again not that I was any expert. And his name was Ralph, which also struck me as odd because , well, it was just such an ordinary name. It would seem, I was to learn, that Ralph was just your ordinary leprechaun.
��Ralph jumped over by the spot where my Angelique tulips were supposed to be, even now, showing some life. He peered up at me, a tall woman rubbing her head as if to ward off Satan.
��“You should sleep when you have a migraine. Let’s your blood vessels rest in your head. By the way, those Angeliques will be shooting up any day now...not to worry.”
��Ralph then sat himself down on a decorative garden rock while I tried to focus one or both of my eyes.
�� Since I was quite sure that it was my migraine that was causing me to see tiny leprechauns, I chose to cease my conversations with Ralph and continue to check around for new garden growth.
��But Ralph chose not to be ignored. “You know why I’m here, don’t you?” he called to me from his rock. I told him that, indeed, I did not.
��“I am here because it is St. Patrick’s day and all of us leprechauns get to introduce ourselves to you more normal humans and grant them a wish.”
��The crocus were blooming quite lovely, I had noted. I was especially pleased with the new striped variety. “A wish, huh?” I responded sardonically, pinching off some spent croci blooms. “What kind of wish?”
��“Well now, any wish you want. What good is a wish if you can’t make any one you want now?”
��Ralph didn’t have an Irish accent, exactly. He had more of an educated New Englander’s accent. Strange, really.
��“Okay,” I said to my hallucinational leprechaun, “send me a million dollars.”
��Ralph jumped off his rock and walked over to the crocus I was admiring with pain-racked eyes.
��“There is one tiny stipulation,” he said.
��Isn’t that just the way? Here I was with a leprechaun named Ralph that wasn’t even real. I could, with the power of my mind, make Ralph do anything I asked and even with this there were stipulations.
��“I grant the wish in the manner I deem suitable,” Ralph explained.
��Now it was serious time to forget this guy. In the manner that he deems suitable my hurting eyeball. Couldn’t I even make up something better than this?
��I continued to survey my gardens, looking for the beginnings of the Coreopsis and the Bleeding Hearts, and worrying about the Angelique tulips.
��“Look, if you don’t make a wish today than I will have to make one for you. You may as well make your best wish. Look,” Ralph implored, running in and out of the foliage and annoying the heck out of me, “what have you got to lose?”
��I held my hand to my head as one huge pain shot through my forehead. My body was informing me that it was time to forget tiny leprechauns and get back into bed.

��March changed into April and April changed into May the year I met Ralph, just as in any other year. The Angelique tulips did bloom nicely and it was their foliage I was tying down when Ralph visited me again.
��It was a lovely May day, not that all May days aren’t lovely to a gardener. The tulips were waning and the azaleas were putting on a show. And I had another bitch of a migraine. The gardens, as they are wont to do in spite of the migraine, called me.
�� “You decided on a wish yet?” a voice called out from behind the half- spouted coreopsis. I almost jumped a foot, which also did not help the migraine.
��“What are you doing here? St. Patrick’s day is long past. Shouldn’t you be back in Ireland, or Boston, or wherever you came from?” Since this mini-leprechaun was now a symptom of my migraines, I did not greet him favorably.
��“I CAN”T go back until you make a wish. You think I like hanging around here in this garden? It gets real bad when you turn on the sprinkler.”
��Since I was in a particularly bad mood, I decided Ralph would just have to suffer with me. I not only did NOT make a wish, as I left the gardens to tend to my migraine, I turned on the sprinklers.

��“Tell me about the leprechaun in your garden, Aunt Sue,” Merrilee yelled as she slammed the screen door and ran back to see the gardens. I had begun to tell Merrilee stories about the leprechaun in my garden because, in a way, there was one, and also because Merrilee was five years old, a magical age to hear leprechaun stories.
��“Aunt Sue, I’ve looked everywhere and I don’t see him”, Merrilee shouted again. She had by now stomped over the sunflowers and was fixing to do some real damage to the shasta daisies. I scooted out to the garden and stopped her from her leprechaun search.
��“Goodness Merrilee,” I said, brushing dirt off of her pretty going-to- church dress and spitting down an errant curl. “He is a garden leprechaun and he certainly does not take kindly to little girls trampling through his garden. You’ll never see him if you don’t calm down.”
��“She has the most active imagination,” my sister Sherry said as she walked down the stone path to join us at the garden. She, her husband, and the rascally Merrilee right here were on their way to church and as is the norm, they stopped by to visit with me and my husband. We would all share a coffee and catch up on the week. If either of my two children were home from college, they would join in.
��“Mommy, Aunt Sue has a leprechaun in her garden!” Merrilee said as proof to Sherry’s claim. “She told me she did.”
��Sherry regarded me who would tell her child of leprechauns. I shrugged my shoulders and remarked that it might peak her interest in gardening. Merrilee heard this and verbally proved the claim again.
��“I already love the gardens Aunt Sue! Look here what I brought you!” with this Merrilee thrust her chubby fists down into the pockets of her frilly pinafore and pulled out a.....well I didn’t know what it was.
��Of course I told Merrilee how beautiful it was and how lucky I was to have such a sweet little niece who would bring me.....? Merrilee took the bait and filled in the blank.
��“Hollyhock angels, Aunt Sue! They are hollyhock angels. Mommy and I made them!”
��I knelt down to see the hollyhock angels up close, and to bestow a kiss on their distributor.
��“See,” Merrilee said, as she tore the hollyhock angel apart. “You take two hollyhock flowers, like this...see,” Merrilee held out the blooms to me for verification. “Then....you hold them upside down against each other...like this...see,” she said. Indeed, the flowers, when placed together in this manner did look like a lady in a hoop dress. “Then you wire them together. Mommy and I use paperclips.” Merrilee took an already bent paper clip and re-twisted it around the hollyhock blooms.
��I kissed Merrilee quickly, then stood up and whisper-asked my sister just why Merrilee called them angels.
��“She loves angels, Sue. Everything is angels. The other day she said she saw angels in the dog food.”
��I held my hollyhock angel gift from Merrilee and waved to her as her father backed the car down the driveway.
��It was the last time I saw any of them alive.
��
��A drunk driver lost control of his car, crossed the median strip of the highway leading to Merrilee’s church, and smashed head on into my sister’s Volvo. My sister, brother-in-law, and drunk driver were killed instantly. The next few hours were a nightmare, as Merrilee hung on to life.
��“She is in a coma, Mrs. Hopkins. We don’t expect her to pull through.”
��The soft words of the doctor caused me more pain then I thought I could bear. My husband placed his arms around me while I sobbed the loss of my sister and her husband, and added more tears for the dying Merrilee.
��“Mrs. Hopkins,” a gentle voice startled me awake. John and I were in the waiting room of the shock trauma hospital. We had been here for over five hours, greeting friends and family of my sister and her husband. It was now late into the night, but John and I decided to wait in case Merrilee needed us.
��I pulled myself up from my husband’s shoulder and shook my head for the cobwebs. A young Doctor was on one knee in front of our couch.
��“Mrs. Hopkins,” the Doctor said again, “we have reason to believe that Merrilee is not going to last much longer. As painful as this is, I must ask if you would consider donating her organs so that others may live.”
��This caused me to sob a bit more. John pulled his arm from behind my neck and sat up soberly to speak to the Doctor.
��“Just why are you asking us? We are not Merrilee’s next of kin.”
�� The Doctor looked confused and pulled out a chart. After shuffling some papers, he said that we were, indeed, Merrilee’s next of kin. Her father was an only child with both parents deceased. My mother and father were also deceased. John and I looked to each other with the realization that we WERE Merrilee’s next of kin.
�� John told the Doctor we would need more time to discuss this.
��The Doctor excused himself and I fell helplessly into my husband’s arms to sob again. I told John that I could not begin to make such a decision in my mental state. Whatever John decided was fine with me.
��John didn’t take kindly to having this decision thrust on him, but time was a major factor here and I simply could not make any sort of sane resolution.
��“Sue, if you really mean this....if you really don’t want any input on this decision and are leaving it up to me...well, I am going to make it. I am going to tell the Doctor that in the event of Merrilee’s death he can take her organs.”
��I nodded into John’s shirt. Either way would have been fine with me.
��After several minutes, we heard a loud buzzer and saw many people in white clothes running toward Merrilee’s room. John and I ran down as well. The Doctor that had spoken to us about Merrilee’s organs gently led John and I out of the room and shut the door. Through the window, I could see the people in the white clothes surrounding Merrilee’s bed.
��“She’s gone, I’m afraid. She had no brain activity so we held little hope.”
��Just then John took the Doctor aside to tell him of his decision. I stood in front of the window to Merrilee’s room and watched the flat lines on all of her life monitors.

��It was six weeks after Merrilee’s death that my garden leprechaun visited me again. It was Autumn, and chrysanthemums bloomed proudly throughout my well-planned gardens. Only this year, the asters and mums held no fascination for me. As scheduled, they bloomed, but with no assistance or indulgence from me. So far as I was concerned, the gardens could all turn to weeds. I had a raging migraine, not that this was anything new. After the accident, migraines were a daily event.
��“Do you want to make a wish yet,” the oddly accented voice said.
��I picked up a garden fork that lay haphazardly tossed in a rose bed. I threw the thing at the stupid little guy with all my might. I was in no mood to talk to leprechauns.
��“You want to give me a wish you stupid elf dressed in green who visits only when I have a headache?” I scream-asked Ralph, the whole while thrusting the garden fork into the ground somewhere in his general direction. “I’ll make a wish Ralphie baby...I’ll make a wish and maybe you can go home where you belong. Bring Merrilee back to life, Ralphie. There! That’s my wish!”
��I had been expanding quite a bit of energy with all this and Ralph was jumping around to avoid spilling green blood at the hands of a garden fork. Finally I thrust the fork deep into the soil, sat down on a landscape boulder and cried.
��“Hey,” Ralph said, now standing next to the boulder when he should be gone. “Okay, you’ll get your wish. Next Spring, when new life is sprouting all about....you’ll see...Merrilee will live on.”
��I took my head from my hands to better regard this little man. Only as I regarded, he faded from bright green to....nothing. He was gone, though my migraine lived on.

��The mums shed their prolific blooms and the Winter snows came. I forgot all about the leprechaun although the migraines still hung around. An unusually mild day in February didn’t rouse my spirits either. I didn’t even browse through the mid-Winter garden catalogues. Since Merrilee died, I got to wondering what good a garden is anyway.
�� So the tulips eventually made their way through the earth and Spring came. Even then I didn’t work the garden. The garden for this year would only receive my guilty glances.
��It was during one such glance that I noticed some unusual growth that I didn’t remember planting. It was a plant with very broad leaves, growing up against the fence that separated my yard from the neighbor. In fact, there were several of these plants. In fact, there were hundreds of these plants, growing all along the fence and I had not a clue what they were or how they got there.
��It was an early June day that I found myself in the library and checking out garden books. I was determined I would figure out just what was growing in my yard. Whatever they were, they were getting ready to bloom.
��Before I could lug my garden book bounty into my house, I was greeted by a young teenage girl just outside my walk.
��“Are you Mrs. Hopkins?” the girl said.
��I shifted my books in my arms and told her that I was. Then a car drove up and a handsome little black boy jumped from the back seat. “Are you Mrs. Hopkins?” the child asked. And before I could answer him, yet another voice asked if I was Mrs. Hopkins. This from a young man in his late teens.
��“Goodness,” I said, “who are all of you.”
��It was Donde who responded first.
��“We received a message along with this pin,” Donde said as he held out his lapel for my inspection. I glanced down to see a pin and a happy little boy. “The message said to meet you here today to show you Merrilee was still alive.”
��With this I almost dropped my garden books. As Joseph Barker Jr. grabbed the books from my aching arms, he explained.
��“I received Merrilee’s liver. Emma May received a kidney. Donde here has Merrilee’s heart. We each received a message, addressed to us as a group, to meet you here today. We were told to wear these pins.”
��I could barely see the pin but was not concerned . I was certainly nonplussed at these strangers now at the base of my porch and all of them bearing Merrilee’s organs. I invited them in.
�� I offered them some refreshments, but they were all eager to see the gardens. Not that they looked like much, what with my neglect. Emma May led the group out my back screen door and let it slam in much the same manner as Merrilee. Joe and Donde followed, each slamming in turn. As I hastened to go out with them, I heard Emma May’s gasp of joy.
��“Hollyhocks! Just look....all these hollyhocks!”
��I looked around the fence at the plants I couldn’t name. As foliage I hadn’t recognized what in full bloom could only be the hollyhocks of Merrilee’s angels. I had never planted a rambunctious hollyhock in my garden. Not ever. They were too untamed for my taste. Yet there they stood, tall and proud and beautiful.
��I turned to look at this little group and now paid more attention to the pins they received with the strange message. The pins were little angels with hollyhock bodies.
��
��That day we laughed and sang and I noticed entirely too many weeds were making themselves at home in my garden. Bumblebees visited the hollyhock blooms and Donde plucked a few for his Mom. Emma May told me of her dream of being a writer. Joe was in his first year of college and planned to pursue a medical career. I receive regular letters and phone calls from the group and am eager to monitor their progress. And every year we all get together in early June when the hollyhocks are in full bloom.
��Merrilee lives, just like the leprechaun promised me.



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