Nazeli

media type="custom" key="7576753"Nazeli Hagen 11-17-2010 109 Seedfolks Final RAFT

Anoush It was Saturday when I first saw the garden. I was in the middle of my protest to save endangered animals on my street corner and I decided to take a break and take a short walk. Halfway down the street I turned and saw it. Where the empty lot used to be, where everyone used to throw their trash, was a beautiful garden. Most teenagers hate gardens and nature and the enviroment, but I love it. At first I just helped. I would stroll through the garden, a bag of soil in one hand and a watering can in the other, and I would offer to water people's plants, or I would offer to put new soil on top of their old soil. After awhile, I decided to plant a garden of my own. I decided to plant peaches because it's the national fruit of Armenia, a little country near Turkey, where I'm from. We eat Armenian food all the time, and we speak Armenian too. We meaning me and my dad. My mom died when I was 7. Now I'm 17, and I can hardly remember her anymore. She was Armenian, so maybe planting peaches would help me remember. The next day I got peach seeds and headed to the garden. I found a spot, turned the soil, planted my seed, and I was done. I started to help other people again, but soon I got frustrated because I couldn't do everything I wanted to do, I couldn't get big things done. Along the way, though, I met a couple of friends. The first friend I met was Maricella. The day I met her I was in a good mood. Her garden was right next to mine and she was a teenager like me, but she was //pregnant//. She also looked mad and in pain all day long.

One day I finally asked her, "Why do you look like you're in so much pain? You chose to be here, so why do you look like you don't want to be here?"

"You're wrong. I didn't choose to be here. I'm taking a class and the lady makes us come here. I hate it here," she replied bitterly.

"Oh. Well if you have to be here you should at least try and enjoy it," I suggested, "I'm Anoush, by the way."

"I guess so, and I'm Maricella, by the way," she said, happier than before. From then on we were sort a friends. I'd help her with her garden and she'd be nice to me. It was a sort of unmentioned deal we had, and it worked out. The next day I met another friend, named Leona. She had a garden of gorgeous flowers a couple of rows away from me. I was going around helping people, and I stopped at her garden. It was a day I was frustrated and I didn't really want to talk, but she had other ideas.

"Hi, I'm Leona, and I just wanted to thank you for helping me with my garden. It's made such a big difference," she said.

"You're lying. I do things like this everyday and nothing big EVER happens," I told her, pouring out my feelings to a total stranger.

"Honey, little things make a big difference even if you don't know it," Leona tells me, making me feel much better. From that point on, we kept getting closer and closer. She sort of felt like the mom I'd always wanted, the one I hadn't had in 10 years. I had formed my own little family within the garden. Maricella was my sister, Leona was my mom and then my dad was just my dad.