My name is Laura, I’m 9 years old and I live in the city. In summer, when it’s school holidays, I go to my grandparents’ house in a little village.

One day, I walked through the orchard to visit Mr. Anselmo, one of my grandparents’ neighbours, so he could teach me how to grow tomatoes and carrots. I wanted to plant my own little vegetable garden at home. There were all sorts of vegetables and fruit in Mr. Anselmo’s garden, because he was the best gardener I had ever met.

“Hello Mr. Anselmo!! How are you?” I asked.

“Well good day to you, miss, ready to learn where most of my food comes from?” he replied.

“Yes! I’m impatient because I want to be a gardener,” I said.

Mr. Anselmo spent all morning teaching me how to look after tomatoes and carrots, how many times to water them, and, above all, how important it is to keep the ground free of weeds, because this could really affect the tomatoes.

From Mr. Anselmo’s lessons, I planted a vegetable patch of tomatoes and carrots. To protect the tomatoes (because carrots grow under the ground and don’t need to be protected), I put up a scarecrow – the birds had eaten the first tomatoes to come out, and I didn’t want them to take any more…

The scarecrow would be in charge of protecting my vegetable patch from the local birds. He had a straw hat and a blue monkey and I painted two eyes, a nose and a mouth on his face.

Ever since I made him, not a single bird has come near to nibble at my tomatoes. I wondered how he did it, so one day I hid a camera in a bush and set it to record.

The next day when I picked up the camera and watched the video, I got a real surprise! A bird was flying near the tomatoes but the scarecrow started spinning around like a windmill and scared him off.

Then I understood that a garden is a magical place, not just because of the rich food that comes from the earth, but because of all the things that make up a garden – the earth, the water, the scarecrow, the compost and lots of other things that work together to give we humans the very best food.

THE END