Eleanor sublimated her poor marriage into gardening. She’d always dreamed of a wonderful husband and family. In fact it turned out horrid. They couldn’t have kids, and he blamed her even though his sperm count was about minus forty in the shade. They had nothing in common. He would go to the pub most nights. Eleanor stayed at home and watched television on her own.
She tried to interest him in having a vegetable garden but he said that gardening was for wusses and went off to the pub again. So Eleanor developed the most beautiful flower garden and didn’t grow vegetables. Her garden took up all the ground they had.
“It saves on having to mow the lawn,” said Eleanor, even though having everything in flower gardens was ten times more work than a lawn. But what a garden! She had flowers to flower so there would be flowers flowering all year round. She had her favourite too: a collection of special irises. And there were daylilies of every shape and colour. Everything! Every plant under the sun! A symphony of colour and scent! A palate of blazing glory!
And then her sister took ill and was dying, and Eleanor had to leave home for a couple of weeks and go to help out.
When she came home, the whole place had been rotary-hoed and planted in potatoes. Her husband had done it. He’d heard in the pub that there was money to be made in growing spuds.