Chapter One, Episode 139 - Today or Any Day - Situationally Theirs

Review, Revision, Edit and Update

Minor repairs required for this pleasant episode: some punctuation, spacing. What I see, besides the story, is that this writer has improved. My questions to myself:  'Is it because I focussed on a specific character? Are episodes with a lot of dialogue and relational stories more disjointed and require more concentration? Things to be alert for.

Today or Any Day

Some people see a lot of things happen and keep their silence. Others see just what is passing in front of the eyes or beside their ears and decide for themselves where to keep silent or not. Gossip or not. Samuel Forrester kept himself to himself. He did like to talk and tell stories but he was most comfortable when he was planting, weeding or harvesting. Even turning the soil in the spring and fall to ready the ground for growth or for rest did his heart good. So when he did see something, like an engaged couple in argument; or when he heard something, like his boss raising a suspicious question from the dark, he kept it to himself. It was more important to him to hear the bushy heather plants humming with bees or the steady thrum and buzz of a hummingbird seeking nectar from the brilliant red trumpet flowers that grew in the corners of his garden. He loved the tall stately sunflowers showing off for the bees. He knew in the fall and winter they granted their seeds for over wintering songbirds. Samuel wasn’t much for cut flowers, only flowers that attracted the bees, hummingbirds and butterflies. Butterflies were a fascination for him. They loved all the flowers but ones they seemed to love the best were the daisies. Elizabeth knew the names of all the flowers around the garden - crocosmia, clematis and coreopsis, daffodils and heather. Sometimes of an evening, Samuel and Elizabeth would walk down by the stream where the willows hung into the water. She could name all the plants and find the tiniest of flowers in among the ferns.

So Samuel had no need of talking about what he had heard people say or what he had seen them do. If anyone had asked him, and some did, he’d just say ‘None of my business and don’t think it belongs to anyone else.’ Then he would point out his best producing tomato plant or the biggest acorn squash in the garden. Or he’d tell the story of his daddy catching him about to carve his initials in the apple tree. Once he started on that story, he’d go on to tell how ‘Elizabeth’s already put up 24 jars of apple sauce from them early summer apples’. And he’d tell how he heard the pickers calling out to one another that ‘this tree's done’ or ‘I’m starting on the next row.’ That would lead him into all the tomatoes Elizabeth’d be canning once they started coming on strong. “Did you know that those two sisters have a good bunch of what comes off this garden and orchard go into town? Food Bank needs all kinds of food  - people are hungry and not so well off in this time of sickness. Some of the care homes too if we find out about it.”

So Samuel had no need of gossiping. There were times that he'd think about things that had happened and things he had heard and wonder. But to himself he just said ‘none of my business - today or any day,’

“We should have great peace if we did not 

busy ourselves with what others say and do.”

~ Thomas a Kempis