Picture writing prompt: Time

Finding beauty in imperfections has always been my strong suit. The ivy swirling around the rusty frames, creeping through shattered windowpanes slowly taking over everything my grandfather had left behind. Even his beloved chair in which he read the newspaper every morning wasn’t safe from the grasps of mother nature and father time. I carefully ran my fingers over the wooden arm rests, brushing off some of the remains of last year’s harsh storms. The memories of my grandparents floated to the surface like hungry fish in the pond during feeding time. My grandmother Martha being an avid herbalist and her husband Albert, my grandfather, was a skilled craftsman. He had built her this glasshouse for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in the hopes of her being able to pursue a career she loved instead of being a homemaker, which was something Martha had always despised. Albert wanted everyone to live a comfortable life, even the exotic plants his wife had collected. He built a heating system, a bird feeder and a large plateau for the plants that were in need of more sunlight. I can still remember the two of them bickering on his eightieth birthday about the installation of a sprinkler system. “You’re a madman!” Martha said while she rolled her eyes “You’re using a walker and you want to put a sprinkler in the ceiling of the glasshouse? You’re entirely bonkers!” She meant it, yet the tone of her voice not only expressed concern but also gratefulness and adoration. “The sprinkler” became their running gag until they both passed away five years later, Martha from cancer and Albert from grief. Their children didn’t have the time nor the energy to take care of the glasshouse, leaving it in my ‘capable’ hands after letting it wither for over twenty years. I don’t have a green thumb, and even if I had I wouldn’t want to change a single thing about the current state of this place. I sat down in my grandfather’s chair and quietly said: “There won’t be any sprinklers in a garden that shows the beauty of time.”