Winning entries to free entry, themed 'Summer Garden' competition
We were unable to find a winning short story among the entries. Instead we have awarded one poetry winner and two flash fiction winners £10 each.
We are currently inviting entries to our Open Short Story Competition 2018, judged by Helen Laycock
https://erewashwriterscompetition.weebly.com/2018-open-short-story-competition-with-helen-laycock.html
Details of our next free entry, themed writing competition can be found here
https://erewashwriterscompetition.weebly.com/2019-free-entry-500-word-themed-writing-competition.html
Congratulations to each of our winners to our free entry, themed 'Summer Garden' competition. Our thoughts are provided at the end of each entry.
Arcadia by Lyne Barnes
Playful zephyrs tease the grass
The mower did not reach,
Graceful ripples wave back in the breeze,
Dappled sunlight sweeps across
The green expanse of lawn,
Happy shadows dance among the trees.
Golden heads like butter stand
And look towards the sun,
Petals cupped to catch each shining ray,
Daisies white with yellow heart
Join in with blossoms wide,
Embracing gleefully another day.
Roses ramble where they can,
As nature wished them to,
A many-coloured heartwarming delight,
Fragrant perfume fills the air
With scent so pure and true,
Spirits lift with such a joyful sight.
Wisteria falls from ancient walls
With lavender-blue hue,
Gay peonies mass in pink and white and red,
While bell-shaped purple foxgloves,
Tall hollyhocks as well,
Stand proudly swaying in their earthen bed.
Busy bees flit bloom to bloom,
Their buzzing fills the air,
As feathered friends regard them from on high,
Finch and sparrow play a game,
Starlings soar above them,
And tweet and chatter float across the sky.
Blackbirds peck with orange beak,
Attacking sunburnt soil
The sun has covered warmly since the dawn,
As harmony spreads over all,
A peaceful happy scene,
And little boys play cricket on the lawn.
We loved the descriptive words in this poem. The feeling Lyne's poetry brought to us was that of serenity and full appreciation of being within a summer garden. Well done, Lyne.
SALAD DAYS by Alyson Hillbourne
The truck emptied the dark, loamy soil into Mr Stevens’ yard. We could smell its richness in the thin summer air, a fruity aroma of centuries buried underground.
We watched from the street as Mr Stevens shovelled the soil into position. When he turned his back we darted forward to touch it: to run the crumbly morsels through out fingers, to bury our noses in its odour and wonder at the colour. Next day, Mr Stevens put up a fence around his plot to keep us out.
He worked in his garden every day. He dug it and raked it. He planted and weeded and all the while, us kids watched from the parched, hard packed ground that surrounded our houses.
Morning and evening Mr Stevens’ watered his plants. It reminded me of the year Mum had pansies in a window box. They needed watering too, until the day we forgot and the leaves went brown and crisp like anything else that tries to survive in our street.
As summer wore on Mr Stevens’ garden grew lush.
“Shame your wife isn’t here to enjoy this,” Dad said to Mr Stevens.
“She’ll be back soon. She’s with her mother.”
Mr Stevens handed out vegetables to us children: a warm, swollen tomato bursting with juice or a crunchy runner bean or sweet green peapod. We savoured the flavour; unlike anything we’d had from the supermarket, where the tired fruit and vegetables had long since forgotten their salad days.
If anyone in the street was sick Mr Stevens made up a veg-box for them, oozing with the healing power of trapped sun and home grown vitamins and minerals. The sun moulded Mr Stevens too, polishing his skin nut brown and the work made his limbs stringy and lithesome.
I don’t know when the rumours started but Danny Baxter at number 24 said he always knew something was wrong.
“Them veg,” he said. “They didn’t taste right.”
We rolled our eyes. How did he know how veg should taste?
One morning the police arrived and unrolled “Crime Scene” tape across the garden. They erected a plastic tent that crackled and flapped in the wind. They dug for three days, destroying Mr Stevens’ carefully planted rows.
On the third day more police cars blocked the street and people in paper suits and special booties took away boxes and bags.
“They found a body,” Danny Baxter said knowingly.
We rolled our eyes again. How did he know?
But we saw them take Mr Stevens away in handcuffs and watched as they took down the tent and rolled up the police tape and left the house.
Soon it looked the same as every other house in the street, with shutters banging in the breeze and cracked, parched earth in the yard.
The only reminder came next summer when every house had a bucket outside, full of dark, loamy soil collected from Mr Stevens’ garden, in which we grew our own tomatoes.
We savoured the sensory language in Alyson's writing. The ending was unexpected and horribly satisfying. Well done, Alyson.
Ants and Wasps and… by DJ Tyrer
It was almost a cliché, only worse. The ants and wasps had made a beeline for his lunch as soon as he set it down. There was even a small white butterfly and a couple of dragonflies in his vicinity, although he couldn’t quite be sure his Danish pastry was the cause, and a tiny black beetle on his trouser leg. In fact, about the only insect that seemed absent was a bee.
He automatically twitched his hand towards one of the wasps to swat it away, then changed his mind.
Why did these things have to ruin a lovely summer’s day in the garden? Was it too much to just relax and enjoy a cake without it all being spoiled?
Picking up the pastry, he gave it a tentative shake, but the ants clung on. He broke off an extra-sticky piece and tossed it away for the wasps, then picked off the ants one-by-one. He was determined to enjoy it if it killed him.
He took a bite and started to chew, then paused, eyes unfocusing as he slipped the contents of his mouth from one cheek to the other. Something was crawling on his tongue.
Something was crawling on his tongue.
Realising his resolution was nowhere as strong as he’d imagined, he spat out the half-chewed pastry and it landed on the grass, an ant quickly evacuating it and running off to alert its fellows of the feast.
Tossing what was left of his lunch away, hoping it would lead the insects elsewhere, he picked up his lemonade and sipped it. Ice cool, it was delightful and he sighed with relief: Nothing could spoil this.
He leaned back.
Plop! He stared down at the glass – tiny ripples radiated out from its centre as a second raindrop struck his neck.
“Oh, I give up!” He stood and strode back towards the house, slurping down the rest of his drink.
Typical English summer – five minutes of torment and, then, it rains.
He slipped back inside, then froze. The sound of a car engine…
Depositing the glass on the worktop, he dashed into the lounge and crouched down by the window and looked out: The owners were back early!
Forget the wasps and ants and rain – the day really was ruined, now!
He turned and ran for it, back into the garden and over the fence.
On the worktop, a glass was waiting for the owners, an unfortunate proof of his presence that would ruin more than just this one day.
A cell in winter didn’t compare to a garden in summer, not even in the rain.
Yes, why do these things have to ruin a lovely summer day in the garden? We chuckled at DJ Tyrer's summing up of the annoying little things that have probably happened to all of us at one time or another, but we were stunned at the unexpected ending. Well done, DJ Tyrer.
We were unable to find a winning short story among the entries. Instead we have awarded one poetry winner and two flash fiction winners £10 each.
We are currently inviting entries to our Open Short Story Competition 2018, judged by Helen Laycock
https://erewashwriterscompetition.weebly.com/2018-open-short-story-competition-with-helen-laycock.html
Details of our next free entry, themed writing competition can be found here
https://erewashwriterscompetition.weebly.com/2019-free-entry-500-word-themed-writing-competition.html
Congratulations to each of our winners to our free entry, themed 'Summer Garden' competition. Our thoughts are provided at the end of each entry.
Arcadia by Lyne Barnes
Playful zephyrs tease the grass
The mower did not reach,
Graceful ripples wave back in the breeze,
Dappled sunlight sweeps across
The green expanse of lawn,
Happy shadows dance among the trees.
Golden heads like butter stand
And look towards the sun,
Petals cupped to catch each shining ray,
Daisies white with yellow heart
Join in with blossoms wide,
Embracing gleefully another day.
Roses ramble where they can,
As nature wished them to,
A many-coloured heartwarming delight,
Fragrant perfume fills the air
With scent so pure and true,
Spirits lift with such a joyful sight.
Wisteria falls from ancient walls
With lavender-blue hue,
Gay peonies mass in pink and white and red,
While bell-shaped purple foxgloves,
Tall hollyhocks as well,
Stand proudly swaying in their earthen bed.
Busy bees flit bloom to bloom,
Their buzzing fills the air,
As feathered friends regard them from on high,
Finch and sparrow play a game,
Starlings soar above them,
And tweet and chatter float across the sky.
Blackbirds peck with orange beak,
Attacking sunburnt soil
The sun has covered warmly since the dawn,
As harmony spreads over all,
A peaceful happy scene,
And little boys play cricket on the lawn.
We loved the descriptive words in this poem. The feeling Lyne's poetry brought to us was that of serenity and full appreciation of being within a summer garden. Well done, Lyne.
SALAD DAYS by Alyson Hillbourne
The truck emptied the dark, loamy soil into Mr Stevens’ yard. We could smell its richness in the thin summer air, a fruity aroma of centuries buried underground.
We watched from the street as Mr Stevens shovelled the soil into position. When he turned his back we darted forward to touch it: to run the crumbly morsels through out fingers, to bury our noses in its odour and wonder at the colour. Next day, Mr Stevens put up a fence around his plot to keep us out.
He worked in his garden every day. He dug it and raked it. He planted and weeded and all the while, us kids watched from the parched, hard packed ground that surrounded our houses.
Morning and evening Mr Stevens’ watered his plants. It reminded me of the year Mum had pansies in a window box. They needed watering too, until the day we forgot and the leaves went brown and crisp like anything else that tries to survive in our street.
As summer wore on Mr Stevens’ garden grew lush.
“Shame your wife isn’t here to enjoy this,” Dad said to Mr Stevens.
“She’ll be back soon. She’s with her mother.”
Mr Stevens handed out vegetables to us children: a warm, swollen tomato bursting with juice or a crunchy runner bean or sweet green peapod. We savoured the flavour; unlike anything we’d had from the supermarket, where the tired fruit and vegetables had long since forgotten their salad days.
If anyone in the street was sick Mr Stevens made up a veg-box for them, oozing with the healing power of trapped sun and home grown vitamins and minerals. The sun moulded Mr Stevens too, polishing his skin nut brown and the work made his limbs stringy and lithesome.
I don’t know when the rumours started but Danny Baxter at number 24 said he always knew something was wrong.
“Them veg,” he said. “They didn’t taste right.”
We rolled our eyes. How did he know how veg should taste?
One morning the police arrived and unrolled “Crime Scene” tape across the garden. They erected a plastic tent that crackled and flapped in the wind. They dug for three days, destroying Mr Stevens’ carefully planted rows.
On the third day more police cars blocked the street and people in paper suits and special booties took away boxes and bags.
“They found a body,” Danny Baxter said knowingly.
We rolled our eyes again. How did he know?
But we saw them take Mr Stevens away in handcuffs and watched as they took down the tent and rolled up the police tape and left the house.
Soon it looked the same as every other house in the street, with shutters banging in the breeze and cracked, parched earth in the yard.
The only reminder came next summer when every house had a bucket outside, full of dark, loamy soil collected from Mr Stevens’ garden, in which we grew our own tomatoes.
We savoured the sensory language in Alyson's writing. The ending was unexpected and horribly satisfying. Well done, Alyson.
Ants and Wasps and… by DJ Tyrer
It was almost a cliché, only worse. The ants and wasps had made a beeline for his lunch as soon as he set it down. There was even a small white butterfly and a couple of dragonflies in his vicinity, although he couldn’t quite be sure his Danish pastry was the cause, and a tiny black beetle on his trouser leg. In fact, about the only insect that seemed absent was a bee.
He automatically twitched his hand towards one of the wasps to swat it away, then changed his mind.
Why did these things have to ruin a lovely summer’s day in the garden? Was it too much to just relax and enjoy a cake without it all being spoiled?
Picking up the pastry, he gave it a tentative shake, but the ants clung on. He broke off an extra-sticky piece and tossed it away for the wasps, then picked off the ants one-by-one. He was determined to enjoy it if it killed him.
He took a bite and started to chew, then paused, eyes unfocusing as he slipped the contents of his mouth from one cheek to the other. Something was crawling on his tongue.
Something was crawling on his tongue.
Realising his resolution was nowhere as strong as he’d imagined, he spat out the half-chewed pastry and it landed on the grass, an ant quickly evacuating it and running off to alert its fellows of the feast.
Tossing what was left of his lunch away, hoping it would lead the insects elsewhere, he picked up his lemonade and sipped it. Ice cool, it was delightful and he sighed with relief: Nothing could spoil this.
He leaned back.
Plop! He stared down at the glass – tiny ripples radiated out from its centre as a second raindrop struck his neck.
“Oh, I give up!” He stood and strode back towards the house, slurping down the rest of his drink.
Typical English summer – five minutes of torment and, then, it rains.
He slipped back inside, then froze. The sound of a car engine…
Depositing the glass on the worktop, he dashed into the lounge and crouched down by the window and looked out: The owners were back early!
Forget the wasps and ants and rain – the day really was ruined, now!
He turned and ran for it, back into the garden and over the fence.
On the worktop, a glass was waiting for the owners, an unfortunate proof of his presence that would ruin more than just this one day.
A cell in winter didn’t compare to a garden in summer, not even in the rain.
Yes, why do these things have to ruin a lovely summer day in the garden? We chuckled at DJ Tyrer's summing up of the annoying little things that have probably happened to all of us at one time or another, but we were stunned at the unexpected ending. Well done, DJ Tyrer.
