I made it to the nearest gate and unlocked it, quickly closing it and locking it again behind me. The gardens were short-staffed today thanks to a viral twenty-four-hour bug at the local school, which was why I wasn’t doing my actual job and was cleaning up leaves.

Not my job.

I wheeled the leaves over to the back of the storage barns when the compost bins were and composted them. I had no idea where all the leaves were coming from—it wasn’t like it was autumn and they were ready to fall, so I could only put it down to the wind. But even then, there were a lot more than I would have thought there would be.

I checked in with a few other gardeners on the walkie-talkie that I hated carting around, and after I confirmed that everyone was fine, I headed in the direction of my greenhouse. There were hundreds of things to plant out now that the forecast showed all risk of frost had passed, and there were at least one-hundred and sixty tomato plants that needed to get into their final positions in the polytunnels over the next week.

Plus the peppers, the chillies, the sweet potatoes, the aubergines, the—

Never mind.

I unlocked the greenhouse and stepped inside. The sun was out, and the lack of clouds meant the sheltered greenhouse was blazingly hot, even with the windows open.

I propped the doors open at each end to let some air circulate or I’d pass out in a few minutes.

The breeze immediately helped, and I set to organising all the plants. There were endless trays of summer and autumn vegetables and flowers, if I didn’t know what I was doing, I would be completely overwhelmed right now.

Thank God I’d been organised earlier this year. Everything was grouped by season and by both plant and, for things like tomatoes, variety.

I picked up my radio and got through to one of the other guys who worked here part-time. “Are the polytunnels ready for these tomatoes?”

“Yes,” he replied. “Working the soil over on polytunnel five now, you can get started bringing them over.”

“Thanks. Can you ask someone to bring the quad bike and trailer to the back of the greenhouse?” I put the radio back down after he confirmed he would and surveyed the tomatoes. They were full of suckers that needing pinching out, and the lower leaves also needed removing so they could be buried deeper to throw out extra roots for stability and strength.

Tedious job.

But worth it when they fruited.

So much of gardening really was delayed gratification.

The quad bike was brought over to the dirt path at the back of the greenhouse, and I wheeled the tomato tray back there to start loading. I kept a plastic bin nearby to throw the suckers and lower leaves into as I went.

This way, I knew they’d be planted the way I wanted them to be.

“Knock knock?”